As the Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, the Guangzhou Administration for Market Regulation is cracking down on the over-packaging of mooncakes, a traditional filled cake given as a gift to mark the festival, since August 26, the Guangzhou Daily reported.
Since mooncakes are a gift, the packaging has been getting ever-more extravagant. For instance, a one-kilogram box of mooncakes comes wrapped in five kilos of packaging. This luxury packaging is a way to show off and gratify gift-givers’ vanity.
The excessive packaging means there will be lots of wasted materials, and most are not biodegradable, read an article in the Workers’ Daily. And this phenomenon is not only seen in the mooncake business. The food delivery industry, express delivery industry and other service industries also have a problem with excessive packaging.
Although there is national standards on restricting excessive packaging, they only target food and cosmetics and most of the standards are not compulsory. It is still hard to ban the phenomenon, the article said.
Further action would be to include excessive packaging into draft legislation and acts which specifies the standard of excessive packing and penalties, the article suggested.
Old Version
