Green consumption has long been a topic of significant concern for the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). The CCICED launched a Special Policy Study (SPS) on "Green Transition and Sustainable Social Governance" that encourages green packaging in industry and logistics. The SPS advocates incorporating the express industry into the green industry guide; a step intended to facilitate package remanufacturing and development of biodegradable packaging. The research outcomes and policy recommendations raised by the CCICED are highly valued by the Chinese government. Recently, eight ministries and departments, including the State Administration for Market Regulation, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and the State Post Bureau, jointly issued a document on stepping up the standardization of green packaging in the express industry that reflects the contribution of the CCICED.

According to the document, China will have set a mandatory national standard for harmless express packaging material and have basically established a wide-ranging, prioritized and well-constructed standard system for green packaging in the express industry by the end of 2022. It is estimated that the domestic express industry generates over nine million tons of paper waste and about 1.8 million tons of plastic waste per year, which are both showing a growing trend and whose damage to the environment thus cannot be ignored. It has become an interior requirement for the transformation, upgrading and sustainable development of industries to standardize green packaging in the express industry and solve the pollution problems caused by express packaging.

Focusing on the requirement of "greening, reducing and recycling" express packaging, the document puts forward the overall goal of standardizing green packaging in the domestic express industry in the next three years and lists eight key tasks, each of which must fulfill the four aspects of optimizing a standard system, creating key standards, supervising standard implementation and internationalizing the standard. The release of the document will accelerate transformation of the express packaging's new material, new technology and new capabilities into standards. Also, it will improve the governance system of green packaging in the express industry, with standards and policies working in tandem.

Next, the State Administration for Market Regulation, in accordance with the document, will continue to establish and release a number of important standards guided by green concepts and keep improving the standard system of green packaging in the express industry, covering the full life cycle of design, material, production, use, evaluation, recycling and disposal, so as to foster an express packaging's "green revolution".