Research on Environmental Issue and Sustainable Consumption of Online Takeout Food—Practice and Enlightenment Based on China’s Meituan

Abstract

In today’s society, consumers’ food needs can be satisfied by catering e-commerce platforms. However, the plastic pollution of tableware and packaging caused by a large number of catering orders every day has always been an unsolved environmental problem. (1) Background: At present, China’s three largest catering platforms, Meituan, Eleme and Baidu, receive 20 million takeout orders daily and consume about 60 million plastic products. Plastic pollution will have a sustained impact on the environment. (2) Methods: In this study, we use literature research and case analysis. We use Meituan’s takeout food as an example. We studied the takeout business growth, status of online takeout in the treatment of plastic packaging, harm to environment, humans and animals, as well as specific solutions. (3) Results: There are four main reasons which contribute to the plastic packaging pollution (i.e., high recycling cost, difficulty to deal with mixed plastic packaging, low effectiveness of collecting plastic packing, and immature technology and treatment to incinerate and landfill catering plastic waste). (4) Conclusion: Our findings suggest that regulators, takeout platforms and consumers, which have corresponding responsibilities in the environmental protection consumption of online food, are supposed to work together to get rid of the online takeout pollution for achieving sustainable consumption. Not only is government legislation needed to improve the waste management system and encourage the exploration of new intelligent waste classification tools, but platforms, businesses and users should enhance the environmental awareness of online takeout packaging pollution as well. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are also discussed.

Quality Effort Strategy of O2O Takeout Service Supply Chain under Three Operation Modes

“…Takeout business is considered to be an O2O business model applied to the catering industry [1]. With its convenient and fast characteristics, it has become the first choice for many people [2]. O2O takeout refers to the food that customers place orders through the online platform; then, the restaurant prepares and packages the food, and the deliverer (rider) delivers the food provided by the restaurant offline [3].…”

Environmental Awareness Survey in the Hungarian Online Food Trade

“…Guo et al studied the Chinese catering platforms as the largest three market players possess 20 million daily orders and consume 60 million plastic packaging products. The result found it evident that the main reasons which contribute to the plastic packaging pollution are related to recycling costs, technology and efficiency [31] Similarly to Guo et al other researchers addressed the problem and proposed different solutions by streamlining logistics processes [32] and presenting an econometric efficiency model [33].…”

Determinants of Intention to Purchase Bottled Water Based on Business Online Strategy in China: The Role of Perceived Risk in the Theory of Planned Behavior

“…The essence of the external diseconomy of environmental pollution and health hazards that are caused by online bottled water is the socialization of private costs. Therefore, to fundamentally solve this problem, it is necessary to internalize the external costs, to let the polluters' pollution drawbacks affect their production or consumption decisions and avoid the spillovers of costs [61].…”