Delivery services align with green development

As many as 10.58 million recyclable canvas sacks came into use at ZTO Express as of March. These innovative bags can be reused over 100 times and typically have a service life of 4-6 months. In the meantime, the express courier company has established 21,000 package waste recycling facilities throughout its network, said Qiu Dapeng, manager of the communications division at ZTO Express.

Likewise, Best Inc has launched a green logistics scheme throughout its business network including in operations, packaging and transport.

The express company has widely applied reusable bags embedded with chips at its major transit centers. In comparison with conventional woven bags that can only be used twice at most, the traceable bags can be reused over 40 times, said Wang Bo, director of network operations at Best Express.

Best had used a total of 9 million such bags, and their accumulated usage counts reached 280 million times.

"Green logistics is backed by the enhancement of technology, efficiency and operational capability,"Wang said.

The advancement of green packaging is taking place throughout the complete express delivery service process. Therefore, the industry could not go green without the participation of all related parties.

Authorities have established clear packaging requirements for both courier service providers and clients.

In accordance with new rules on parcel packaging that came into effect in March, courier companies should purchase packaging materials that meet government set standards and prioritize materials that can be reused or are easy to recycle, whilst clients of express delivery services should also support green packaging and comply with the new rules. Clients should also avoid using materials that are not in line with relative laws and regulations, said Xinhua, citing Guan Aiguang, an official with the State Post Bureau.

The development of green express services also faces cost challenges.

Amid intense industrial competition, domestic couriers are seeing narrowed profit margins. And switching to biodegradable packaging adds additional costs for couriers, Yang said.

Wan Yuyang, a deputy general manager with YTO Express's network management in Hainan, said there are still some unsolved problems, including the supply of green packaging materials, difficulties in purchasing green biodegradable packing in Hainan and insufficient support in recycling packaging cases from end users.

"We are trying to solve the hardships in recycling with technologies such as chips inside reusable packing boxes so that we can trace their locations and recycle them accordingly," Wan said.

Experts also raised concerns regarding the recycling of packaging materials. Currently, about 80 percent of paper packaging waste from logistics can be reused. However, 99 percent of the plastic packaging waste cannot be effectively recycled due to low recall value.

China's first ever "plastic road" project using recycled milk bottles set a good example of giving hard-to-recycle plastics a second life.

The "Milk Bottle Road" by US chemical giant Dow and Chinese dairy firm Shiny Meadow was unveiled on April 22 at East China University of Science and Technology's Xuhui campus in Shanghai. Enabled by Dow's asphalt modification technology, more than 6,000 used milk bottles and other plastic waste was used to pave the polymer-modified asphalt road. The green roadway exhibited commendable durability compared with conventional asphalt surfaces.

"Hard-to-recycle plastics are often discarded in landfills and waterways without consideration for their value in other applications. The importance of plastics must be an impetus for brand owners, recyclers and other value chain partners to prevent it from being lost as waste," said Bambang Candra, Asia-Pacific commercial vice-president of packaging and specialty plastics at Dow.

China's courier sector handled more than 21.93 billion parcels in the first quarter this year, up 75 percent year-on-year, or an average of about 240 million parcels on daily basis, according to the State Post Bureau.

Ecological environmental protection and green development require collective efforts of people from all walks of life, Wan said.