Carbon emissions from urban takeaway delivery in China

Abstract

Online food delivery has become a popular mode of urban food consumption in China as its underlying business mechanism, Online To Offline (O2O), gaining popularity. However, the environmental impacts of a rapidly expanding online food delivery industry and its potential to mitigate environmental burdens remained unexplored in China. Our research found that Chinese cities generated 1.67 MtCO 2 -equivalent (CO 2 e) from 13.07 billion times of deliveries in 2019, including transport and packaging. The transportation-related GHG emissions were 745 KtCO 2 e in 2019, with an average of 0.057 kg CO 2 e per order and an average of 0.011 kg CO 2 e per capita. These emissions have surged from 0.31 MtCO 2 e in 2014 to 2.74 MtCO 2 e in 2021. We predict that this figure will increase further to 5.94 MtCO 2 e by 2035. However, with a range of policies such as replacing motorcycles with electric bikes and optimizing traffic routes, it is possible to mitigate such GHG emissions by 4.39–10.97 MtCO 2 e between 2023 and 2035. These findings highlight the need for further research into the environmental impact of online food delivery and the potential for mitigating it.