Dear MEL
Topic Readers,
Online
shopping frenzy sparks trash concern
$18
billion, or 120 billion yuan, sales were generated on a single day. That’s what
China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba posted on its Singles’ Day sales festival on
November 11th this year, up 32 percent from the previous year.
You can
easily imagine it will take several days or even weeks to fulfill this
magnitude of orders across the country. Trucks and drivers will be running
around to deliver hundreds of millions of packages. What will happen to the
boxes and wrapping materials such as bills and envelopes, poly and plastic
bags, cardboard boxes and tapes when those delivered goods are unpacked? Even
though 80% of the cardboard is recycled, the rest needs to be produced by
chopping trees. Also, there are tons of non-biodegradable materials that will
be dumped or burned somewhere. It is estimated that 30 billion tons of post
packages are produced in 2016 and that figure will increase to 50 billion by
2018 as more people shop online in China by their smartphones. But who is
paying all these environmental costs?
Enjoy
reading and thinking how to reduce or discourage the use of shipping materials.
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