Takeout Food, Online Delivery Packages Could Bury China’s Cities

China’s major cities could find themselves buried in takeout noodle containers and packaging from online deliveries without swift action to boost recycling.

The country of about 1.4 billion people is ramping up its recycling policies for residential waste in major cities but not enough to keep up with the anticipated increase in trash coming from the explosion in e-commerce and takeout delivery orders.

Some 22 billion items—mail, boxes, parcels, and takeout orders—were delivered in the first half of 2018, more than the total amount delivered in all of 2015. By 2020, an estimated 70 billion pieces of waste will ...