Meituan Waimai Blue Mountain Project

Meituan Waimai and the China Environmental Protection Foundation (CEPF) jointly set up an expert panel to research environmental protection solutions. It also works with partners to create an eco-friendly food delivery chain in which packaging is simplified from the source and waste is well-sorted and recycled, covering the full circle of operations. The project contributes to building a day-to-day, market-based recycling system for disposable packaging along the industrial chain. In Guangzhou and Shanghai, among other places, such a system has been put in place. The project is also committed to transforming single-use plastic food containers into other useful tools. Meituan Waimai has been working to enhance consumers’ awareness of responsible consumption. Through optimizing its services and operations system, it encourages users to opt out of single-use packaging by launching an “opt-out of disposable cutlery” feature on its app. In 2020, the number of users choosing no single-use packaging increased 120 percent from that of 2019. The project and CEPF set up Blue Mountain Fund, supporting environmental protection organizations to plant and maintain forests in partnership with merchants. As of late 2020, the project’s environmental protection campaigns had reached over 1 billion impressions, and distributed 20 million biodegradable packaging bags, 1 million paper food containers and 10,000 sets of recyclable tableware to merchants; the project also distributed 350,000 pieces of biodegradable packaging in 20 different styles, each developed from the project’s innovative packaging design program, to merchants for free. Lastly, the project attracted 350,000 platform partner merchants to join the Project, and together donated over 14 million yuan for charitable activities.