Citizens are becoming more conscious of green consumption as ecological civilization advances. Yet, merchants often do not provide them with the option to choose green consumption. For example, the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) Reduce & Reuse Plastic Working Group has been conducting research and promotion for the past five years. Simultaneously, the lack of transparent laws and regulations on the environmental responsibilities of enterprises has resulted in inaction and a large amount of unnecessary waste.
Examples include but are not limited to when consumers go to coffee shops or instant food chains with their own mugs, stores refuse to use them, and insist on providing throwaway cups. When ordering take-out meals online, no matter if the consumer needs one-time-use utensils or not, their orders usually turn out to be delivered with 1-2 pairs of chopsticks and other unnecessary disposable utensils.
CBCGDF has always been a strong advocate of ecological civilization, green consumption, and human-based solutions (HBs). The human-based solution is to center ‘I’ and allow every person to tackle climate change and the biodiversity crisis. Therefore, since humans are the root of all problems, we are the only solution to them. As a result, the ‘I’ has the power to turn back the tide on the biodiversity and climate crises.
For example, more and more companies are willing to respect the right of green consumption and start to offer green options because consumers are proposing to offer reusable cups voluntarily. Another example is that we have worked with Chinese civil society and have sued China’s three major food delivery platforms, Baidu, Meituan, and Ele.me, for causing a lot of waste pollution while failing to assume the appropriate social duty.
Many Chinese citizens prefer to order at home or bring their cutlery with them, eliminating the need for disposable chopsticks. However, as of 24 August 2017, none of China’s five major food delivery platforms gave consumers the option of “no chopsticks”. According to big data, in July 2017, the number of daily takeout orders on one platform exceeded 13 million. Suppose a conservative consumption estimate of 1.7 pairs of chopsticks wasted per order is taken. In that case, the daily usage of chopsticks on the Meituan takeaway platform alone might be as high as 20 million pairs. This is an unnecessary waste. Given this, CBCGDF launched the Walk Your Chopstick campaign at the end of July 2017. It aims to encourage merchants to respect the green consumption rights of consumers and incorporate green corporate social responsibility.