As the city is calling for the public to use recyclable bags to replace the nonbiodegradable ones, residents and businesses in Shenzhen have shown widespread support for the restrictions and bans on plastic bags, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported Thursday.
According to a directive issued by the Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform Commission that took effect Tuesday, the builtup areas of Shenzhen and Guangzhou will ban the use of nonbiodegradable plastic bags in department stores, supermarkets, pharmacies, bookstores, food delivery services and exhibition services before the end of the year.
“Although the supermarket still offers plastic bags to purchase, we encourage customers to bring their own bags for packing and are actively looking for alternative shopping bags,” a manager with the supermarket within Rainbow Department Store in Huaqiangbei Subdistrict, Futian District, told the Daily.
The reporter with the Daily also found that a large number of middle-aged and elderly people would use their own cloth bags and baskets to pack the groceries.
According to McDonald’s Shenzhen, the fast-food chain announced in June this year that they would phase out plastic straws.
Statistics showed that McDonald’s China has avoided using more than 2.5 billion plastic bags in total by replacing plastic bags with paper bags, and reduced the amount of plastic used by about 10 percent by optimizing the size of knives and forks.
Wang Yi, national public relations director of Nayuki, a leading new-style tea brand based in Shenzhen, said that since the end of July this year, the brand’s cup holders for takeaways have been made from recycled pulp.
Nayuki has started to replace plastic straws with paper ones in its stores across the country starting this month, and has encouraged customers to bring their own cups to buy drinks, said Wang.
Many hotels in Shenzhen said that they will opt for paper straws once their stock of plastic straws is used up.
The emergence of recyclable courier boxes also provides a new way for the express delivery industry to forgo plastic bags.
According to data, Shenzhen has currently set up packaging waste recycling devices in 554 EMS outlets, and put into use 85,000 recyclable express boxes.