JD.com Partners with WWF and CCTF to Launch Second Annual Green Planet-Sustainable Week

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com partnered with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and The China Children and Teenagers’ Fund (CCTF) to launch the second-annual “Green Planet-Sustainable Week” event.

The week-long sustainability program kicked off last week on Oct. 10 with aims to raise awareness on maintaining sustainable consumption while reducing consumption-related waste. During the event, JD.com, WWF, and CCTF will work together to develop more sustainable solutions to address the challenges brought on by the massive environmental footprint of e-commerce.

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“By actively encouraging its over 300 million customers to recycle and reduce waste, JD.com is admirably leading the transition towards a sustainable future for China and the world,” said Jin Zhonghao, Head of Market Practice of WWF China.

Green Planet-Sustainable Week includes a number of recycling activities to promote eco-friendly practices outlined by the three organizations such as offering eco-friendly and reusable shopping bags, hosting clothing drives to collect old and unused clothing for recycling, and collecting old appliances to be recycled.

In response to the ongoing rise of pollution caused by plastics, JD.com‘s new bags have been recreated from the fabric of discarded apparel. Free bags will be distributed throughout the event and will come with special RFID Chips that can be scanned as coupons in offline stores through JD.com‘s partners.

JD will be collecting clothing donations from customers across the whole China, recycling them, and then redistributing them across impoverished areas of the country. The recycled and reused products will also be donated to lower-income families, people with disabilities, and charity groups. This year, the program is set to cover 47 cities.

Furthermore, Chinese customers will be able to trade in major appliances for recycling through JD.com‘s platform. The appliances will then be disassembled, recycled to be used in other potential appliances to reduce waste and pollution generation.

“JD.com holds a special responsibility to use our influence and infrastructure to mitigate the environmental impact of consumption,” said Libo Ma, head of the CSR department at JD.com and general secretary of JD Foundation.

Last year, the total volume of green products available on JD.com increased by more than a half and the total volume of green purchases made on JD.com increased by 71 percent, contributing to 15.1 percent of total sales on the platform during the same period.

The company is also researching biodegradable packaging to be used in the future. In 2016, JD.com had saved over 100 million meters of tape since it decided to switch over to using thinner strips of tape in packaging.