sustainability Article Research on Environmental Issue and Sustainable Consumption of Online Takeout Food—Practice and Enlightenment Based on China’s Meituan Meiwen Guo 1,2,†, Liang Wu 1,2,*, Jianping Peng 3,* and Chun-Hung Chiu 3,† 1 School of Management, Guangzhou Xinhua University, Guangzhou 510520, China;
[email protected] 2 Entrepreneurship Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China 3 School of Business, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] (L.W.);
[email protected] (J.P.) † These authors contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first author. Abstract: In today’s society, consumers’ food needs can be satisfied by catering e-commerce platforms. However, the plastic pollution of tableware and packaging caused by a large number of catering orders every day has always been an unsolved environmental problem. (1) Background: At present, China’s three largest catering platforms, Meituan, Eleme and Baidu, receive 20 million takeout orders daily and consume about 60 million plastic products. Plastic pollution will have a sustained impact on the environment. (2) Methods: In this study, we use literature research and case analysis. We use Meituan’s takeout food as an example. We studied the takeout business growth, status of online takeout in the treatment of plastic packaging, harm to environment, humans and animals, as well as specific solutions. (3) Results: There are four main reasons which contribute to the plastic packaging pollution (i.e., high recycling cost, difficulty to deal with mixed plastic packaging, low Citation: Guo, M.; Wu, L.; Peng, J.; effectiveness of collecting plastic packing, and immature technology and treatment to incinerate Chiu, C.-H.