2023-09-14 07:26:35
Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat… For several years, home meal delivery applications have multiplied and have changed the consumption habits of many French people. However, this growth is also accompanied by an increase in plastic waste, particularly with the use of single-use plastic cutlery.
In China, this scourge has become a major environmental challenge. To reduce plastic waste, Alibaba’s food delivery platform, Ele.me, has introduced an unprecedented measure of “green nudges”“green thumbs up” in French.
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“Green dots” for planting a tree
According to a recent study, this is proving effective, since it has made it possible to increase the share of orders without cutlery by 648%, reports theUniversity of Chicago Energy Policy Institute (EPIC). According to researchers, across China as a whole, this measure might even reduce 3.26 million tonnes of plastic waste and save 5.44 million trees each year.
Concretely, these “green nudges” include the renunciation of disposable cutlery as an option by default and the awarding of “green points” for non-use of cutlery. When a customer accumulates enough points, they can then exchange them to plant a tree in their name, in a desert area of China.
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“A tool for policy makers”
“Few policies target plastic waste generation at the consumer level, with the exception of taxes on plastic bags”said Guojun He, research director of EPIC-China, author of the study and associate professor at Hong Kong University Business School. “Our results show that simple nudges can make a big difference in changing consumer behavior and might become a tool for policymakers to address the immense challenge of plastic waste”he added.
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Ele.me is the third largest food delivery company in China, following Uber Eats and DoorDash, with over 753 million users in 2022. The researchers studied each user’s monthly food order history for two years, in ten major Chinese cities. Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, which are the three cities to offer “green boosts”. And Qingdao, Xi’an, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuhan and Chengdu, which are the seven control cities without nudges,
Among these cities, the authors randomly sampled nearly 200,000 users. “Other food delivery platforms, such as Uber Eats and DoorDash, may attempt similar measures to reduce cutlery consumption and plastic waste globally,” Guojun He said.
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