In a regular office building in Beijing, a garbage station has dozens of black garbage bags piled together. Sorter Liu Jie opens the bags to find recyclable plastic bottles, but there are only three or four in each bag, while the majority of the space is taken up by takeout plastic containers.

Including bottles, barrels, boxes, and other plastics, they belong to recyclable materials; however, only about 5% can be recycled on a large scale. A reporter's on-site investigation found that the recycling process for plastic takeout boxes in Beijing is still not smooth.

There are still untouched dishes in the bag.

Just past noon, the cleaner, Sister Wang, began to sweep the ground for litter. She is responsible for the square outside a building, and in addition to sweeping, she also has to tidy up the garbage bins. The reporter noticed that the bins were already overflowing with trash, the majority of which consisted of neatly packed takeout containers. Boxes, cups, spoons, forks, and straws, most of which are made of plastic. When the bins can't hold any more, some people just toss their trash beside the bin. "It’s like this every noon; people just casually throw it away as they pass by."

This is an area with a high concentration of office buildings, and there are also many dining establishments clustered here. At noon, delivery riders shuttle back and forth between the restaurants and the office buildings, creating a lively scene. In front of each office building, there are piles of takeaway orders waiting to be claimed by their "owners." White-collar workers continuously go downstairs to pick up their orders and then return upstairs to eat.

After the meal, these takeout containers were thrown into the trash can with almost unchanged volume. The trash cans next to each building are the most crowded after lunch. To prevent the trash cans from overflowing, some have an extra black garbage bag placed next to them.

The garbage bins by the residential building are not "idle" either. Old Zhang manages the garbage bins on an ordinary small street and has to deal with takeout containers every day. "We have a lot of elderly people here, so not many order takeout, but some do take food home, eat, and then throw it away." Old Zhang picks up plastic bottles and aluminum cans from the garbage bins, but he never picks up takeout containers. He says that no one wants them, and they are quite dirty, with soup and oil.

In the afternoon, around 2 o'clock, cleaner Aunt Li was busy on another small street, sweeping the ground while rummaging through the trash cans. She carried a large woven bag with her, collecting valuable recyclable items. Plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and metal were her main targets. She usually doesn’t take plastic food containers. But sometimes there are unexpected "gains," for example, she often finds takeout that is perfectly intact and hasn't been touched.

"You see, two boxes of dishes, one box of rice, and there's the receipt." This bag from a certain chain Hunan restaurant has two dishes priced over 40 yuan each, plus rice and a packaging fee, bringing the total close to 100 yuan.

According to a report released by Meituan, plastic packaging accounts for about 80% of takeaway packaging, far exceeding other materials such as paper, aluminum foil, and non-woven fabric. In 2020, the national usage of plastic takeout boxes by Meituan was approximately 1.07 million tons. By 2023, Meituan handled 21.89 billion takeaway orders, involving 1.427 million tons of plastic. It has been said that "the takeaway plastic bags can cover a West Lake in three days, and the takeaway boxes can pile up to 770 Mount Everest in a day."

The difficulty of recycling lunch boxes due to being "not very valuable."

Aunt Li said that if she encounters plastic food containers that are good quality and clean, she will collect them as well. However, such containers are hard to come by, and they aren't worth much either. "I often collect a big bag and only sell it for 1 yuan."

She took out a transparent round plastic container lid from the woven bag, squeezing it with her hand while explaining, “The people at the recycling station told me that if it squeezes quietly like this, it means the plastic quality is good, and they want it. If it makes a clicking sound when squeezed, nobody wants it.” Besides that, red, black, and labeled containers are not accepted.

Sister Liu and her husband have contracted a small garbage station in a park, which includes two office buildings. According to her incomplete statistics, about 100 bags of garbage need to be cleared every noon. "The tricycle needs to make about eight or nine trips," she says. For each bag of garbage, she will go through it again to find recyclable materials. There are usually about three or four plastic mineral water bottles in each bag of garbage. If she can find aluminum cans, that would be a stroke of luck. "Aluminum cans sell the best, but it takes about twenty days to collect a bag, which is too little."

Every bag has plastic lunch boxes, which take up a lot of space, but she doesn't want them. "This thing doesn't weigh much and is hard to sell." The same goes for foam; to meet the recycling standards, all tape and stickers must be removed, and it must be clean and free of dirt.

Sister Liu and her husband live in the underground parking lot of the park. They wake up early and work late every day, keeping the recyclable materials for themselves and sending the other garbage to the garbage building. She said, "The work is hard, and there is too little that is valuable."

Several nearby garbage stations all transport their waste to a comprehensive waste processing facility. The reporter arrived at the waste facility and asked the staff whether plastic takeout boxes are recycled.

He thought for a moment and said, "If you can clean it up and pack it properly, I'll take it. There are specialized people who do these things, and they send it all to the other side of Fatou Bridge."

It is understood that plastic lunch boxes are generally made of materials such as PP (polypropylene) and PET (polyethylene terephthalate). Clean plastic lunch boxes can be recycled and processed into pellets, which can be widely used in industries such as automotive, electronics, and household goods.

Xu Yuanhong, the founder of Beijing Aifenlei Environmental Co., Ltd., told reporters: "Incinerating and landfilling plastics will put pressure on the environment and is not the best way to handle them." Since 2018, Aifenlei has adopted a "single-bag" convenient model to promote the collection of all low-value recyclable materials, including takeout boxes. However, as of now, the scale of recycled takeaway plastic boxes in the country still accounts for only about 5% of the total.

The connection in the recycling process is still not perfect.

In Changping District, at the Love Classification Sorting Center, staff members are sorting clean plastic food containers on the assembly line, organizing them for unified storage. The plastic containers are classified by different materials, compressed, packaged, and then loaded onto trucks to be sent to recycling companies for resource recovery. The plastic containers undergo high-temperature cleaning, crushing, and are reshaped into recycled pellets, which can then be made into T-shirts, recycled paper notebooks, art decorations, and other products.

When the reporter arrived, two trucks loaded with compressed and packaged plastic takeout boxes had just been taken away. This is part of the collection of plastic takeout boxes by "Love Classification" in several cooperative street communities in Changping District. Residents can clean their takeout boxes and place them along with other recyclable materials into collection bags, which can then be handed over to "Love Classification" either through a scheduled pick-up or self-service drop-off. Data from 2024 shows that over six years, "Love Classification" has recycled a total of 756 tons of plastic takeout boxes, but this is just the "tip of the iceberg" for takeout plastic boxes.

On May 1, 2020, the new "Beijing Municipal Solid Waste Management Regulations" officially came into effect, and significant progress has been made in waste sorting over the past five years. For example, the kitchen waste from restaurants has established a standardized and stable recycling pathway. However, there have always been issues with the connection in the recycling process for takeaway and packaged plastic containers.

"The resident families we cooperate with have developed the awareness to first rinse the takeout boxes with water before placing them into the recyclable collection bags. However, among the large office crowd and families that have not formed this habit, most still directly throw takeout boxes with leftover food and grease into other garbage bins," said Xu Yuanhong. He added that besides transparent takeout boxes, those that are dyed (black, red, etc.) or have labels are even harder to recycle and have lower recycling rates. Although plastic takeout boxes are classified as recyclable, they are considered low-value recyclable materials. "Many recyclers, both individuals and companies, feel that takeout boxes are too light and take up too much space, leading to high transportation costs and a weak willingness to collect them."

Currently, the work that can be done is to strengthen publicity and guidance. On one hand, we need to make more people aware that plastic take-out containers can be recycled after being cleaned; on the other hand, we can guide enterprises to use more recycled materials to promote market circulation. "In addition, we have always emphasized reducing waste at the source. For example, when dining at a restaurant, use your own containers for take-out to avoid using disposable plastic containers as much as possible."