Alibaba's logistics arm to deal with Singles Day waste aftermath
A Donghua University student puts packaging materials from her delivery back into a collection box inside a Cainiao courier service point.
Alibaba's logistics affiliate Cainiao Network said it is working with logistics staff and environmental protection agencies to reclaim packaging materials for courier delivery firms.
Nationwide, Cainiao is working with China Environmental Protection Foundation and has set up nearly 5,000 recycling boxes to encourage the recycling of paper packaging used for the delivery of online goods so that they can be collected for future use again.
It has already reclaimed 3.5 million paperboard carton packages nationwide since the beginning of this week.
On this year's Singles Day, major online shopping sites saw the total number of online shopping packages climb 25 percent from a year ago to 1.35 billion, according to the State Post Bureau.
The booming number of courier packages also brought concern about how packaging materials could be collected and recycled.
In Shanghai, 20 such recycling boxes are currently in use, Cainiao's project manager Li Tianjiao said, and they are looking to work with more courier dispatch networks in the aftermath of the Singles Day shopping spree to encourage environmentally friendly actions.
As of Wednesday, a total of 100 million packages have been delivered through Cainiao network's affiliate courier companies.
