Green Box Programme in China: From Slow Violence to Slow Hope?

Abstract

This short video explores the potential story of slow hope by looking into how Cainiao, a global delivery company, runs its packaging recycling programme at a pick-up station in Shenzhen, China. Online shopping and efficient delivery logistics have redefined consumption habits and urban landscapes in contemporary China. In 2024, the number of packages moving around the country reached 100 billion, according to statistics from the National Post Office. During the Double Eleven Shopping Festival in November 2024 alone, the number of packages spiked to 700 million. Seeing the mountains of packaging waste produced on a daily basis, the Chinese delivery company Cainiao started a recycling programme called Green Box in 2016. To date, the award-winning Green Box programme has covered over 100,000 pick up stations in 315 cities in China. While many celebrate the company’s environmental and social governance – potentially a story of slow hope for positive environmental change (Mauch 2019), the programme’s operation specifics remain obscure. In this video, Duan Jiaqi, Qin Xiaoyi and Lu Ziyu show more perspectives from one of the pick-up points in Shenzhen. They found that the corporate responsibility programme has continued to rely on the informal network of urban waste collection by rural migrants, and its implementation is limited by various factors.