Focus on Arts and Ecology

The booming food delivery industry has increased China’s consumption of disposable plastic products, effectively cancelling out the effect of policies to reduce plastic, according to thepaper and CCTV. Policies to restrict the use of single-use plastic bags were implemented in 2008 and reduced the number of plastic bags used through 2016 by 70 billion – more than 8.7 billion plastic bags per year on average. However, in 2016, about 14.7 billion plastic bags were used in China’s food delivery industry. The consumption from this industry is far higher than the number of plastic bags saved by shopping outlets and supermarkets.