Quick and dirty

China’s food-delivery business is booming. So is waste

Wooden chopsticks and plastic boxes threaten the environment   Oct 19th 2017 | BEIJING

外卖很快但不干净         外卖火爆，随之而来的垃圾也是    一次性碗筷威胁着环境

THREE couriers in hard helmets cram into an office lift in Beijing—one clad in red, one in yellow and one in blue. The trio are dispatching food that was purchased online through China’s most popular meal-ordering firms, which fill urban roads every midday with their colourful delivery people on electric bicycles. Delivery fees as low as three yuan ($0.46) have helped to transform urban lunch-hours. But the booming business is also fuelling concerns about everything from waste to the abuse of workers.

在北京一处办公场所的电梯里挤进来三名带着头盔的外卖小哥，一个红色一个黄色一个蓝色。 他们外派的食物来自中国最大的网上订餐平台的订单，穿着彩色制服骑着电动车的外卖员大街小巷随处可见。低至三元的外送费改变了城市的午餐情形。但外卖的迅速发展也引起了诸多担忧，从垃圾/浪费到从业人员环境。

Such services—which enable users of a single site to order food from a swathe of local restaurants—are expanding around the world. But in China the industry is on a tear. By the end of June, the number of registered users had risen to 295m, 40% more than at the end of last year, according to government analysts. The value of meals bought online was about $25bn in 2016 and could rise to around $36bn by the end of next year, says iiMedia, a research firm. The market leaders are Meituan and Ele.me. Both still make losses in food delivery, but they have backing from Tencent and Alibaba respectively—tech giants eager to find ways of pushing customers to their duelling online payment systems.

网上订餐服务让消费者可以用一个APP从当地不同的餐厅订餐，外卖也在全世界发展。 但在中国外卖行业甚嚣尘上。据官方分析有，截止七月有2.95亿人注册使用较去年底增长40%。研究公司iiMedia称2016年网上订餐消费达 250亿美元明年底有望达到360亿美元。外卖行业的佼佼者是美团和饿了吗。两个公司都在亏损，但他们分别有腾讯和阿里巴巴的支持，科技巨头急切想办法让消费者使用自己的网上支付通道。（微信、支付宝）

Such businesses first began to take off in student dormitories. These days young office-workers are by far the biggest market. But there is much hand-wringing about the consequences of their popularity. Officials say the couriers threaten road safety. They ride electric bikes which are cheap, need no licence and are handy in cities like Beijing that restrict the use of motorcycles. Delivery people often mount pavements or drive against the flow of traffic to maximise earnings during the lunchtime rush. Last month officials in Nanjing said meal-delivery bikes in the eastern city had been involved in more than 3,000 accidents in the first six months of the year. In one district of Shanghai police have introduced a penalty-points system. They order those who acquire a certain number of points to perform community service. The police can ask couriers’ employers to fire them.

外卖首先是在大学宿舍兴起。目前最火爆的是年轻的上班族们。然而外卖的流行带来越来越多的担忧。政府说外卖员影响交通安全。北京禁摩，外卖小哥骑着廉价、没有拍照且随手可得的电动车。午餐高峰，他们冲进人行道、逆行就是为了多赚点钱。上个月南京的一名政府人员说今年上半年南京市有超过3000起交通事故跟外卖电动车相关。上海的一个区，交警推出一个扣分罚款的条例。要求扣分到一定程度要被要求做义工。 交警有权要求外卖公司解雇违规者。

Another worry is the welfare of delivery people, many of whom are migrants from the countryside. In several ways they have it easier than other types of courier: food boxes are easier to handle than bulky parcels, and the recipients are always there. But China Labour Bulletin, an NGO in Hong Kong, says meal deliverers have been staging growing numbers of protests about poor treatment by their employers (usually subcontractors), including wages paid late. Linking their pay to customer ratings has also made it easy for customers to demand more of them than they should: the purchase of groceries en route to their destinations, for example, or the disposal of household rubbish.

另一个担忧就是快递员的工作福利水平，他们大多数是进城务工人员。很多方面他们比其他快递员更轻松：因为餐盒较笨重的快递更容易处理，收货人不会不在（落单）。但位于香港的非政府组织---中国劳工报称，越来越多的外卖员抗议雇主（很多是二老板，包工头）的糟糕待遇，也有拖欠工资。快递员的收入和客户评价绑定，这方便了客户对快递员提出额外要求，如送餐的路上顺带点东西，或者顺手带走家里的垃圾。

Most hotly debated of late is the impact the business is having on the environment. Each day about 65m meal-containers are discarded, by one estimate. Campaigners object to the unwanted cutlery, napkins and chopsticks that restaurants selling through online platforms habitually bundle with orders. The Green Volunteer League of Chongqing, a Chinese NGO, says that food-delivery sites have not made it easy enough for customers to refuse such sundries (the big companies deny this). In September a court in Beijing agreed to examine whether they have violated consumers’ rights.

最近争论最多的是外卖对环境的影响。中国每天丢掉大约6500万个一次性餐盒。餐馆对网上来的订单会默认捆绑不需要的刀叉、餐巾和一次性筷子，环保主义者对此提出抗议。位于重庆的非政府组织环保志愿者联盟认为外卖平台让取消捆绑销售变得困难（大的外卖公司不承认这点）今年九月北京的一个法庭同意针就外卖平台是否违反消费者权益进行调查。

There would be much less reason to worry about the mountains of waste if households and local governments did a better job of keeping recyclables separate from gunk. This year the central government ordered 46 cities to come up with new systems for sorting rubbish, which it talks of making mandatory by 2020. That is progress, but only if it is unwavering: over the years officials have found several similar campaigns all too easy to throw out.

如果每家每户和政府都能做好垃圾分类就不会有垃圾成山的担心。今年中央政府令46个城市施行新的垃圾分类措施，到2020年前强制执行。对于中国来说是进步，但前提是政策落地。要知道在过去的几年里也颁布类似的政令推出但也都无疾而终。

原文 https://www.economist.com/news/china/21730427-wooden-chopsticks-and-plastic-boxes-threaten-environment-chinas-food-delivery-business