Green Express Packaging Gets Hard Standards: Inside Hunan's Push for Circular Boxes and Recovery

At the Cainiao pickup point in Building 7 of Kaile International City, Changsha, shop owner Mr. Zhao handed a parcel to a customer on August 25 and added his usual reminder: if the carton is not needed, drop it in the recycling box beside the counter so the next neighbour sending a parcel can use it.

Not long before, eight departments including the State Administration for Market Regulation jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Standardization of Green Express Packaging (the Guiding Opinions), setting out how China will standardize green packaging for express deliveries.

In Hunan, handwritten four-copy waybills have largely disappeared, giving way to two-copy and even single-copy electronic waybills. Beyond trialling returnable delivery boxes and eco-friendly recyclable sorting bags, couriers have rolled out carton take-back schemes and switched to "single-strip" taping for ordinary light parcels and "cross" taping for medium and large ones to cut tape consumption.

Green packaging standards move toward binding rules

Under the Guiding Opinions, the goal is to put in place by 2022 a comprehensive, strict and binding standards system for green express packaging, and to progressively improve a governance framework in which standards dovetail with laws and policies. Standards are to act as a "hard constraint" that helps packaging reduction, greening and recycling deliver significant results.

Making packaging "greener and leaner" has become an industry consensus. In June, the State Post Bureau issued the Specification for Green Packaging of Mail and Express Items, which sets out detailed requirements around standardization, reduction and recyclability: void space in a package should in principle stay below 20%; delivery firms should promote electronic waybills across the board, especially single-copy ones; and for boxes sealed with a single strip of tape, that tape should be no longer than 1.5 times the maximum combined internal dimension.

Pickup points take the lead on recovery

"For the convenience of nearby residents, we collect larger parcels from their doors free of charge. The company does not supply pickup materials, so the station has to find its own packaging for those collections," Mr. Zhao said. He does the math: a 50cm-wide, 55m-long roll of standard wrapping foam costs 30 yuan, and a medium three-layer carton costs 0.5 yuan. Cost pressure is why he recovers as many still-sound cartons as possible from customers and keeps tape use to a minimum.

A Best Express station on Kaifu Temple Road in Kaifu District has a similar fixture: an easy-to-assemble express packaging waste bin supplied by the Hunan Express Industry Association, with separate slots for paper and plastics. "What can be used a second time is mostly medium and small thickened cartons. Single-use black plastic bags and the foam padding inside boxes are rarely reusable — most end up at the waste station with household rubbish," a courier there said. Cold-chain items such as foam boxes and ice packs used for fresh produce, along with metallized film bubble envelopes used for clothing, remain single-use for now.

Hunan firms test greener delivery

By one estimate, China's express delivery sector consumes more than 9 million tonnes of paper waste and roughly 1.8 million tonnes of plastic waste every year — and those volumes are climbing fast. During visits, reporters found that the greening of logistics has drawn broad public attention, with e-commerce players and couriers introducing green measures across packaging, delivery and recovery.

SF Express has introduced its returnable "FengBOX" in Changsha, replacing sealing tape with a zipper and trimming inner filling. Once couriers hand over items such as 3C products and luxury goods, the box goes back to the warehouse for reuse — up to 50 trips. "Every piece of SF packaging is subject to reduction: large document envelopes have dropped from 300 grams to 230 grams, and the printing ink has changed from black to gray," said Yang Qian of the public affairs department at Hunan SF Express Co., Ltd. The company also runs a carton recovery incentive scheme, rewarding staff who collect used express boxes on their own initiative.

During the 2019 "Double 11" shopping festival, STO Express's Changsha operation added 100,000 new eco-friendly bags, covering the sorting and transfer of more than 90% of express volume within the province. "The bags are made of waterproof nylon fabric, break down within three months in the natural environment and can be reused more than 50 times," said Liu Haiping, Changsha transfer manager at STO Express Hunan. A single reuse cycle costs just 6 fen, against 1-2 yuan for a disposable plastic woven bag, sharply lowering the cost of moving parcels.

JD Logistics has announced another upgrade to its Green Stream Initiative, extending "Green Stream Boxes" to nearly 30 cities nationwide while running a long-term idle carton recycling program. The Cainiao Alliance, meanwhile, is pushing original-factory shipping, with more than 70% of non-fragile goods on Tmall Supermarket now dispatched in their original packaging.

Green delivery still needs a collective push

Notably, even with e-commerce platforms and couriers actively promoting greener packaging, the everyday reach of green express boxes, recyclable packaging and recycling bins remains far short of what is needed. Industry observers argue that standards are indispensable if express packaging is to become genuinely green, lighter and circular.

One industry practitioner points out that couriers, packaging manufacturers and e-commerce platforms are all exploring green packaging innovation, yet they largely work in silos. Franchise-based "Tongda" express brands are still caught up in price wars, and few franchisees are willing to commit money and manpower to building green delivery systems.

In his view, effective recovery and circulation of express packaging consumables requires a society-wide recycling mechanism — only centralized, large-scale collection can raise efficiency and lower costs. He suggests couriers join forces to connect offline self-pickup points, harness couriers' last-mile role and add incentives, creating a closed "deliver - collect - recover" loop that lifts the turnover rate of recycling bins and returnable packaging.

— Reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-378538.html