Singles' Day sales new battleground in China's efforts to cut carbon emissions

TAIYUAN (Shanxi) • A few days after placing her shopping order online, Ms Wang Maiqi received the pick-up notice from a courier station in her neighbourhood.

After collecting her purchase, she put the packaging in a recycling counter at the courier station and received a virtual egg on a mobile app on her phone.

"When (I've collected) four (virtual) eggs, the platform would deliver the real ones to my home free of charge," said Ms Wang, a resident in the city of Taiyuan, in north China's Shanxi province. "It's a win-win action with the old packaging recycled and consumers getting tangible benefits."

In this year's Nov 11 Singles' Day shopping bonanza, 60,000 courier stations under Alibaba's logistics arm Cainiao Network have sent out 7.5 million eggs for consumers who recycled parcel boxes.

The annual shopping festival, initiated by Alibaba in 2009, is now getting greener and becoming a new battlefield where companies are trying to make a difference amid the country's efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Alibaba's e-commerce platform Tmall issued 100 million yuan (S$21 million) of green vouchers this year, encouraging consumers to buy energy-efficient home appliances and products with green certificates to support the country's carbon-reduction goals.

E-commerce giant JD.com has also joined the low-carbon campaign, developing recyclable packaging, deploying electric cargo vans, and adopting photovoltaic power generation in warehousing.

Among items on JD.com's platform during this year's shopping festival, there were more than 150 million green products. The company said energy-efficient air conditioners, refrigerators and televisions customers bought last year could reduce carbon emissions by nearly two million tonnes annually.

China recently announced it would strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. According to the Ministry of Commerce's Five-Year Plan for E-commerce Development released last month, e-commerce firms are urged to actively adapt to green and low-carbon development requirements, establish a green development vision, fulfil environmental protection responsibilities and promote green innovation.

Chinese courier giant ZTO Express launched more than 11 million recycling transfer bags, replacing about 1.16 billion disposable bags, equivalent to a reduction of about 104,000 tonnes of garbage.

"The Singles' Day shopping spree not only represents a consumption carnival now. It is, more importantly, an occasion to advocate the concepts of green consumption and a low-carbon life and encourage enterprises to save energy and cut emissions," said Professor Geng Yeqiang at the School of Economics and Management at Shanxi University.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on November 15, 2021, with the headline Singles' Day sales new battleground in China's efforts to cut carbon emissions. Subscribe