Microplastic Pollution in China, an Invisible Threat Exacerbated by Food Delivery Services
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Microplastic Pollution in China, an Invisible Threat Exacerbated by Food Delivery Services Jun Liu1 · Ting Zhang1 · Sarah Piché‑Choquette2 · Guofang Wang1 · Jun Li3 Received: 15 June 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract With the rapid development and democratization of the internet and smart phone industry, online food delivery services have become increasingly popular all over the globe, namely in China. One of the unfortunate drawbacks of these delivery services is that they mainly use single-use plastics as food packaging, therefore generating large amounts of disposable food containers to meet demand. Such plastic containers reach the end of their service life after a single meal, and are then discarded as plastic waste. The sheer amount of plastic food containers discarded in this manner exacerbates various environmental issues, including one that is invisible to the naked eye: microplastic pollution. This minireview summarizes the history of food delivery services in China, from orders made face-to-face to digital orders, as well as the consequences introduced by the tremendous amounts of plastic waste generated by the food delivery services. Microplastic pollution could be mitigated to a certain extent by improving the classification, handling and management of single-use plastic containers in China. Furthermore, additional studies focusing on microplastic pollution caused by food delivery services are needed, especially as the use of these services is on the rise worldwide. Keywords Food delivery · Plastic containers · Microplastic pollution · Classification With the rapid development of information technology, smartphones and mobile applications, software have become an essential component of our daily lives (Baabdullah et al. 2019; Ismagilova et al. 2019). According to eMarketer (2018), there will be more than three billion smartphone users by the end of 2020, which represents over a third of the world population. To date, practically anything can be purchased online, including groceries, flight tickets, hotel bookings and ready-to-eat meals. Online shopping is a new, albeit widespread habit among Chinese people. For example, Tianmao and Jingdong are two well-known and increasingly popular Business-to-consumer (B2C) online platforms selling goods to customers without using third-parties. In * Jun Li [email protected] 1
Civil Engineering, Tongji Zhejiang College, Jiaxing 314051, China
2
Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology, Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
3
College of Environment, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310014, China
addition to these online platforms, online food delivery services are also increasing in popularity among employees who lack the time or energy to cook at home or eat out. Consequently, the convenience of online-to-offline (O2O) retailers, restaurants and services are currently booming in China. The number of food delivery
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