Mooncake Gift Boxes Get a Second Life as Surplus Mooncakes Head to "Food Banks

On September 27, according to a report by China Media Group's Economic Voice program "Tianxia Caijing," as the Mid-Autumn Festival mooncake consumption boom gradually fades, many consumers have mooncake gift boxes at home waiting to be recycled, and some mooncakes they cannot finish waiting to be dealt with. Economic Voice's investigation found that manufacturers' pre-designed simple conversion schemes have become a new way to reuse mooncake gift boxes, and "food banks" have become a new destination for leftover mooncakes. Experts remind that some details of recycling and reuse need attention.

Pursuing practicality on the basis of environmental friendliness is a new exploration by many mooncake manufacturers this year. Besides choosing environmentally friendly materials such as 100% recycled polyester fibre and natural plant fibres to make mooncake gift boxes, many manufacturers also try to make the boxes fully useful, attaching folding instructions so that the used gift box becomes a small everyday item.

Li Kexin, manager of the Starbucks Kerry Centre flagship store, told reporters: "In the past, after the Mid-Autumn Festival people often felt at a loss about what to do with lavishly packaged mooncake gift boxes. This year Starbucks also emphasized practicality on the basis of environmental friendliness in its design. With simple folding, the mooncake gift box can become a magazine holder, a stationery organiser, a stand for electronic products, a natural amplifier, a laptop riser and so on, promoting green and environmentally friendly consumption and living habits to consumers."

Leftover mooncakes often also leave some consumers scratching their heads: throwing them away feels wasteful, but keeping them does not use them up, so they can only wait for them to expire. The reporter noted that this year some public welfare organizations launched mooncake collection activities, redistributing collected mooncakes that meet consumption conditions to groups such as community residents on minimum living allowances, children of migrant workers and sanitation workers, thereby reducing food waste.

Wang Mingjie, project manager of Shanghai's "Oasis Food Bank," said that more than 8,000 mooncakes have been received so far, some sent by courier from all over the country and some delivered directly to operating points by kind-hearted people. Staff will, on the premise of ensuring food safety, deliver these mooncakes to those in need, starting the mooncakes' "second life."

"We require that donated mooncakes have intact inner packaging and a shelf life of more than 10 days. Volunteers check the shelf life and packaging of every mooncake. We distribute the mooncakes as quickly as possible, and when distributing we remind recipients of the shelf life and so on, urging them to eat them soon," Wang Mingjie said.

For most people, putting mooncake gift boxes and leftover mooncakes into waste sorting and recycling stations is a more common option. Under the current waste sorting method, the outer packaging box of mooncakes basically counts as "recyclable," while uneaten mooncakes are "kitchen waste" or "wet waste."

Wen Zongguo, director of Tsinghua University's China Circular Economy Industry Research Centre, reminds that in this process there are still some details to pay attention to—for example, the desiccant in the mooncake box should be put into "other waste" or "dry waste"; the plastic film, tape and other strongly adhesive attachments on mooncake packaging should be removed as far as possible, which will make subsequent recycling easier.

Wen Zongguo said that, on the whole, the recycling of mooncake gift boxes is the main way the industry end "turns waste into treasure," and mooncake gift boxes will ultimately become recycled plastics, recycled paper and many other forms. "Recycling means sorting and reprocessing the different materials of packaging. For example, the separated plastic packaging, after sorting, crushing, washing, drying and pelletizing, can form recycled plastic pellets, which then have many uses; some recycled polyester plastics can even be made into textiles. Another example is the separated paper packaging, whose volume is quite large. The common practice now is to crush them, remove the colour and make pulp; after pulping, through multiple processes, they can be made into recycled paper, packaging paper bags, office paper and so on."

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-378352.html