As of December 2022, the number of takeaway users in my country has increased to 520 million. There are many takeout platform merchants and different ingredients are packaged in a variety of ways. It is difficult to accurately estimate how much plastic waste is generated by takeout across the country. A large amount of takeout plastic waste is mixed into domestic waste for disposal.
Professor Wen Zongguo, director of the Circular Economy Industry Research Center of the School of Environment at Tsinghua University, pointed out that my country will generate more than 17 billion takeaway orders in 2020, growing at a rate of about 30% to 40% every year. By 2023, the amount of plastic waste generated from takeaways may be between 600,000 and 1 million tons. Judging from the treatment methods of some mixed waste across the country, incineration accounts for about 55% and landfilling accounts for about 40%. During the landfill process, due to its non-degradable nature, the impact of take-out plastic waste on groundwater and soil will be relatively prominent.
Professor Wen Zongguo pointed out that to effectively control the problem of plastic pollution from takeaway waste, the best way at present is to recycle and reuse. In response to the issue of recycling, Professor Wen Zongguo's team conducted an innovative exploration of applying artificial intelligence technology to the recycling of low-value waste such as take-out plastic waste.
“Reducing plastic” requires “picking up plastic” and increasing plastic recycling
At the beginning of this year, Shenzhen launched a pilot project for classifying and recycling take-out packaging waste in commercial office buildings. Special trash cans for take-out packaging waste have been added to the pilot office buildings. After employees pour take-out food residues into the kitchen waste trash cans, all take-out packaging is collected separately and sent for recycling. Currently, the project has covered 86 commercial office buildings in Shenzhen, and nearly 1,000 kilograms of takeaway lunch boxes are recycled every day.
