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Microplastic Pollution in China, an Invisible Threat Exacerbated by Food Delivery Services

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Abstract

With the rapid development and democratization of the internet and smart phone industry, online food delivery services have become increasingly popular all over the globe, namely in China. One of the unfortunate drawbacks of these delivery services is that they mainly use single-use plastics as food packaging, therefore generating large amounts of disposable food containers to meet demand. Such plastic containers reach the end of their service life after a single meal, and are then discarded as plastic waste. The sheer amount of plastic food containers discarded in this manner exacerbates various environmental issues, including one that is invisible to the naked eye: microplastic pollution. This minireview summarizes the history of food delivery services in China, from orders made face-to-face to digital orders, as well as the consequences introduced by the tremendous amounts of plastic waste generated by the food delivery services. Microplastic pollution could be mitigated to a certain extent by improving the classification, handling and management of single-use plastic containers in China. Furthermore, additional studies focusing on microplastic pollution caused by food delivery services are needed, especially as the use of these services is on the rise worldwide.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by Science and Technology Planning Project of Jiaxing (Grant No. 2018AY1104).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil Engineering, Tongji Zhejiang College, Jiaxing, 314051, China

    Jun Liu, Ting Zhang & Guofang Wang

  2. Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology, Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Sarah Piché-Choquette

  3. College of Environment, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310014, China

    Jun Li

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  1. Jun Liu
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  2. Ting Zhang
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  4. Guofang Wang
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Correspondence to Jun Li.

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Liu, J., Zhang, T., Piché-Choquette, S. et al. Microplastic Pollution in China, an Invisible Threat Exacerbated by Food Delivery Services. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 107, 778–785 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00128-020-03018-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00128-020-03018-1

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