Chinese takeout platforms consider environmental plan

Chinese food takeout platforms are considering a new environmental plan seeking to unify restaurants' takeout packaging, to help cope with increasing plastic waste, a business insider said on Friday.

Sang Meng, former COO of Yum China, one of the largest fast food companies in China, said that last year in China 406 million people made about 20 billion takeout orders, which produced waste of 820,000 metric tons.

"There are roughly three kinds of restaurants playing in the takeout food industry: international brands like McDonald's and Pizza Hut, native big brands and other small restaurants.

"The first two have qualified suppliers of packaging materials, while the third kind, what we usually call 'fly restaurants', don't use packages that meet standards," said Sang, at the China Plastic Conference held by China Synthetic Resin Association in Beijing.

According to Sang, it is hard to force small players to buy food packaging from big but more expensive companies. As demand goes up, the number of unqualified suppliers keeps increasing.

"Therefore, in order to reduce takeout plastic waste, we need to tackle the problem from the root — that is to take food packaging materials into consideration when ranking restaurants on platforms such as Meituan or Eleme," he said.

The idea under consideration is that restaurants that don't use environmentally friendly packaging would be ranked lower than those that do on food takeout platforms, he said.

Efforts will also be made to lower the price of environmentally friendly packaging and encourage big suppliers to raise output.

"After all, market hands can influence players' decision whether to buy or not," he said.