Blue Sea under the Garbage Classification

China's garbage classification can be traced back to July 1957. At the time, the headline of Beijing Daily published the article ‘Garbage should be Collected after Classification’, calling on Beijing residents to sort and recycle garbage. In the era when the whole society was lacked of resources, the classification of garbage was carried out more smoothly than expected. The citizens spontaneously sold the recyclable garbage for money, and most of the non-recyclable kitchen waste became feed or fertilizer.

After 62 years, China has suffered from the “garbage siege” brought about by the rich social resources. In another July, Shanghai first started the management of domestic waste. In this new era, the scope of garbage sorting has long exceeded that of Beijing in the past. Behind this, there are numerous new industries hidden.

Political and business cooperation clean ingredient project

Clean ingredients are also called freshly sterilized ingredients, which are prepared by vacuum-packaging in a sterile environment after trimming (such as removing inedible parts, cutting, etc.), washing, disinfecting and so on. At present, there is no standard for clean ingredients in China, but in general, the purchasers only need to simply clean and cut these ingredients before using.

At present, the main purpose of the Beijing and Shanghai government to implement the clean ingredient project is to solve the problem of wet garbage. ‘The vegetables have no rotten leaves, no yellow leaves and no soil; as for fish, gills, scales and organs are removed’. The standard of disinfection and cleaning is low now, but at least the amount of household wet waste can be reduced from the source. Tons of vegetable leaves and viscera removed by the distributors will be directly transported to the cooperative cattle farms, chicken farms and feed enterprises for recycling. It is environmentally friendly and can alleviate the burden of handling garbage on the residents and the city sanitation system.

 

In 2019, the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce will, as planned, fully promote the municipal government's practical projects – the establishment of 500 community-based smart micro-food markets, and cooperate with the greening and urban departments to strengthen the food market waste classification propaganda guidance and promote implementation. While standardizing the management of the food market, it advocates community residents to carry out green consumption and promote “source reduction” to guide the listing of clean ingredients.

The new agricultural and sideline products wholesale market in Yanshan, which covers an area of about 700 mu in Beijing, will assume the function of processing ingredients. It will encourage merchants to conduct clean ingredients transactions by reducing the entry fee. Only Beijing Xinfadi Market has 16,000 tons of commodity cargo handling capacity per day, with an annual loss of about 1.75 million tons. Promoting the clean ingredient industry nationwide will not only facilitate residents' lives, but also save a lot of resources and have a positive impact on environmental protection.

China's fresh loss rate is around 30%. In the past, some of these loss parts were left in the market, and some of them followed the consumers back to the home kitchen and became kitchen waste. Whether they are left in the market or brought into the family kitchen, the loss parts of fresh food will enter the city trash can, and finally transferred to the landfill.

The appearance of clean ingredients has eliminated these “useless efforts” and hopes to reduce some landfill pollution. The fundamental purpose of this clean ingredients project is to prevent fresh waste from entering the municipal waste treatment system, thereby saving urban waste management resources. At the same time, the loss part is rationally utilized. This is different from the industry that is processed in the city, the waste from these industries like fresh delivery needs to be disposed of by the municipal waste system.

Whole foods will benefit on both citizens and city administration

Related industries are agricultural market, logistics companies, fresh vegetable distributors, and biodegradable packaging manufacturers.

Classified trash can

Since the implementation of waste sorting management in Shanghai, classified trash cans have been favored by the market. Many plastic products factories have been manufacturing garbage cans in three shifts, and the market is still in short supply. The difference between classified trash cans and normal trash cans is that the former has the function of accommodating different kinds of garbage at the same time, and some classified trash cans also have prominent garbage marks. Most of these garbage bins are beautiful and generous, and can facilitate the classification of garbage for residents.

An awarded design of simple household classification trash can

Although ordinary plastic trash cans are cheap, many residents are still willing to buy high-priced classified trash cans for convenience. Trash can manufacturers are also willing to invest a lot of resources in the production of classified trash cans.

Ordinary plastic trash cans do not need to be redesigned or remolded, but with low prices, enterprises can only rely on small profits but quick turnover. More importantly, ordinary plastic trash can is not what the market needs today. Although the new classified trash cans need to be remolded, but the high price can make up the high cost. Developing classified trash cans with more functions and more beautiful appearance are useful for companies to get more profits.

Retail price of Classified trash can is much higher

However, due to the insufficient intellectual property protection, there will be imitations soon after the launch of new products, and the high profits of a new trash can only last for several months. Therefore, current trash can manufacturers need to strengthen their brand image so that consumers can remember the brands of the trash cans they buy, not just styles.

The industries related to the new classified trash can include the injection molding machine industry, upstream raw materials industries such as PP and HPDE, and logistics industries.

Kitchen waste disposer

When the kitchen waste disposer is working, the high-speed rotating permanent magnet motor drives the turntable in the grinding chamber to grind the food waste into fine particles. In most families, this process can be done in about 10 seconds. In addition to limited kinds of rubbish, such as carapace and pig bones, a large amount of easily spoiled garbage can be shattered and flowed into the sewer pipe immediately after meal preparation or meal.

In May, the sales volume of kitchen waste disposers of various platforms was 7,830 units, which surged to 23,076 units in June with an increase of 194.7%. In the past 618 e-commerce year, the sales of kitchen waste disposer on Jingdong reached 3.5 times that of last year within half an hour; and the sales of kitchen waste disposer on all channels of Suning has increased by 612.85% year-on-year in the ‘618 program’.

At present, the penetration rate of China's kitchen waste disposer is less than 0.5%, which is far from the penetration rate of more than 50% in the United States. Although China's existing urban sewer design can only afford about 10% use of the kitchen waste disposer in theory, the market for kitchen waste disposers is still very broad with China's population being considered.

Food waste disposers market is still huge in China

Garbage sorting applet

Alipay has launched a number of garbage sorting applets, and more than a thousand kinds of garbage can be sorted by one click. At present, there are two ways to use the classification helper. Users can search for ‘junk classification guidance’ or ‘garbage classification guide’ on Alipay, then by searching or directly uploading the garbage image, and the result would come in few seconds.

In addition to "distinguishing garbage", residents can also make appointments for "collecting garbage" by using Alipay, which is as convenient as appointing an express delivery. Waste newspapers, cartons, plastic bottles, broken glass, etc., can be placed online, and workers would come to fetch them. At present, the platform has supported the distinguish function in 155 cities, and the recycle function covers more than 8,000 communities in 11 cities. More than 2 million people have placed “selling garbage” on the platform, and over 70% are under 40.

The service of applets is still limited

On June 29th, Tencent WeChat team officially recommended four small programs related to garbage sorting, which allowed the public to search for garbage sorting on WeChat.

Alipay and WeChat are the most used mobile apps for Chinese residents. The small programs developed on these two platforms have more exposure and larger potential user base. At the same time, it also helps to improve the stickiness between users and applets. The current development of the waste sorting project is based on the ‘national’ APP, such as WeChat and Alipay. If choose Taobao, Jingdong or Meituan, since these platforms are not that frequently used, developers need to specialize the applets according to the function of the apps.

Garbage throwing service

After the implementation of waste sorting management, the community generally adopts scheduled and located garbage throwing, and some communities neglect the needs of the residents who work with a “996” model, thus spawning the garbage throwing service.

The ‘running leg service’ provided by the take-out platform ELE added ‘helping to dump garbage’ service, which costs 12 yuan per order. The service is priced highly, and its targeting people are who have an urgent need to dump garbage. Therefore, the user repurchase rate is not expected to be high and the market is small.

The main force of the garbage dumping service is the community retirees and shopkeepers. The garbage throwing services provided by these people are generally charged monthly, and the average single price is low. Due to the obvious price advantage, even in the future the regulation changed for every resident’s convenience, there will still be people who purchase the garbage throwing service for an easier life.

Some express delivery companies have also launched a new service project of ‘throwing garbage after the delivery finished’. The workers would give customers a reminder message in advance to tell that the goods will be delivered soon, and also suggesting the customers to put their garbage out of the door so courier can take the garbage after the delivery.