BEIJING — In all likelihood, the enduring physical legacy of China’s internet boom will not be the glass-and-steel office complexes or the fancy apartments for tech elites.
北京——中国互联网繁荣所留下的经久不衰的实体遗产，很有可能不是玻璃和钢铁建造的综合写字楼，也不是科技精英们的高档寓所。
It will be the plastic.
而是塑料。
The astronomical growth of food delivery apps in China is flooding the country with takeout containers, utensils and bags. And the country’s patchy recycling system isn’t keeping up. The vast majority of this plastic ends up discarded, buried or burned with the rest of the trash, researchers and recyclers say.
中国外卖应用的快速增长，正导致这个国家被外卖餐盒、餐具和袋子淹没。而它不完善的垃圾回收系统也已经跟不上。研究人员和回收商说，绝大多数的塑料最终会被丢弃、掩埋，或与其他垃圾一起焚烧。
Scientists estimate that the online takeout business in China was responsible for 1.6 million tons of packaging waste in 2017, a ninefold jump from two years before. That includes 1.2 million tons of plastic containers, 175,000 tons of disposable chopsticks, 164,000 tons of plastic bags and 44,000 tons of plastic spoons.
科学家估计，2017年中国的在线外卖业务产生了160万吨包装垃圾，是两年前的九倍。其中包括120万吨塑料盒、17.5万吨一次性筷子、16.4万吨塑料袋和4.4万吨塑料勺。
Put together, it is more than the amount of residential and commercial trash of all kinds disposed of each year by the city of Philadelphia. The total for 2018 grew to an estimated two million tons.
这些加在一起，比整个费城市每年处理的各类住宅和商业垃圾还要多。2018年，这一总数更是增加到了约200万吨。
People in China still generate less plastic waste, per capita, than Americans. But researchers estimate that nearly three-quarters of China’s plastic waste ends up in inadequately managed landfills or out in the open, where it can easily make its way into the sea. More plastic enters the world’s oceans from China than from any other country. Plastic can take centuries to break down undersea.
中国人均产生的塑料垃圾仍比美国少。但研究人员估计，中国近四分之三的塑料垃圾最终进入了管理不善的垃圾填埋场或露天场所，在那里，塑料垃圾很容易进入大海。中国流入世界海洋的塑料比其他任何国家都要多。塑料在海中需要几个世纪才能分解。
Recyclers manage to return some of China’s plastic trash into usable form to feed the nation’s factories. The country recycles around a quarter of its plastic, government statistics show, compared with less than 10 percent in the United States.
回收商设法将中国的一些塑料垃圾转化成可用的形式，供该国的工厂使用。政府统计数据显示，中国回收利用大约四分之一的塑料，而美国的这一比例不到10%。
But in China, takeout boxes do not end up recycled, by and large. They must be washed first. They weigh so little that scavengers must gather a huge number to amass enough to sell to recyclers.
但在中国，外卖盒基本上不会得到回收利用。它们首先需要被清洗。而且也太轻了，收废品的人需要大量积攒，才能凑够足以卖给回收商的重量。
“Half a day’s work for just a few pennies. It isn’t worth it,” said Ren Yong, 40, a garbage collector at a downtown Shanghai office building. He said he threw takeout containers out.
“废半天功夫挣几分钱，不值的，”40岁的任勇说，他在上海市中心一栋办公大楼内收废品。他说他会把外卖餐盒扔掉。
For many overworked or merely lazy people in urban China, the leading takeout platforms Meituan and Ele.me are replacing cooking or eating out as the preferred means of obtaining nourishment. Delivery is so cheap, and the apps offer such generous discounts, that it is now possible to believe that ordering a single cup of coffee for delivery is a sane, reasonable thing to do.
对中国城市里很多工作过于繁重或单纯只是犯懒的人而言，美团和饿了么这类主要的外卖平台正在取代自己做饭或外出就餐，成为更受青睐的食物获取方式。运费实在太便宜，且这些应用提供的折扣力度又如此之大，以致于如今你也许会认为，单点一杯咖啡送上门是件正常、合理的事情。
Yuan Ruqian knows that it is not. Yet she, too, has succumbed.
袁汝芊知道不是这么回事。但她也已顺应潮流。
Like the time she was craving ice cream, but a newly opened Dippin’ Dots store seemed so far away. Or when she orders delivery for lunch, which is nearly every day.
比如当她想吃冰淇淋，但新开的一家得意点(Dippin Dots)似乎又太远时。或者当她叫午餐外卖时——她几乎天天叫外卖。
Asked about the trash she generates, Ms. Yuan, 27, who works in finance in Shanghai, said: “Laziness is the root of all evil.”
在问及她所产生的垃圾时，这位27岁的上海金融从业者说：“懒是万恶之源。”
The transformation of daily life has been swift. Meituan says it delivered 6.4 billion food orders last year, a nearly 60 percent jump from 2017. Those orders were worth $42 billion in total, meaning the average order was $6.50 — about enough for a decent meal for one in a big Chinese city.
日常生活的转变是迅速的。美团称去年送出了64亿份点餐订单，比2017年猛增近60%。这些订单总值420亿美元，也就是说平均每单6.5美元——差不多足够在中国大城市点份像样的单人餐。
Ele.me — the name means “Are you hungry?” and is pronounced “UH-luh-muh” — has not disclosed similar figures. But across China’s major takeout apps, orders worth a combined $70 billion were delivered in 2018, according to the analysis firm iResearch.
饿了么尚未披露类似数字。但据分析公司艾瑞咨询(iResearch)的统计，中国各主要外卖应用2018年送出的订单金额总计为700亿美元。
By comparison, online food delivery sales in the United States are expected to total $19 billion this year, according to Statista. Uber says its Uber Eats service generated $7.9 billion in orders worldwide last year. GrubHub reported $5.1 billion in food sales and 159 million orders in 2018, implying an average order value of $32.
相比之下，根据Statista的数据，美国在线送餐销售总额今年预计为190亿美元。优步(Uber)称，其Uber Eats服务去年在全球产生了79亿美元订单。GrubHub报称，2018年共产生1.59亿份订单，食品销售额为51亿美元，即每单均价32美元。
Around the world, the convenience of such services comes with costs that can be easy to overlook. Labor controversies, for instance. Or roads made more hazardous by takeout couriers zooming around on motorbikes. Plastic waste is just as easily ignored, even when it is being generated and mismanaged on a titanic scale.
在全球范围内，这类服务的便捷性可能伴随着一些容易被忽视的代价。比如劳资纠纷。或是因为送餐员骑着摩托车四处穿行而陡增安全隐患的道路。塑料垃圾同样容易被忽视，尽管它们正在以惊人的规模产生，且没有得到妥善处置。
China is home to a quarter of all plastic waste that is dumped out in the open. Scientists estimate that the Yangtze River emptied 367,000 tons of plastic debris into the sea in 2015, more than any other river in the world, and twice the amount carried by the Ganges in India and Bangladesh. The world’s third and fourth most polluting rivers are also in China.
全世界露天倾倒的塑料垃圾有四分之一在中国。科学家估计，2015年长江向海洋排入的塑料垃圾达36.7万吨，居于全世界河流的首位，是印度和孟加拉境内恒河的两倍之多。世界污染程度排名第三和第四的河流也在中国。
Takeout apps may be indirectly encouraging restaurants to use more plastic. Restaurants in China that do business through Meituan and Ele.me say they are so dependent on customer ratings that they would rather use heavier containers, or sheathe an order in an extra layer of plastic wrap, than risk a bad review because of a spill.
外卖应用可能在间接鼓励餐馆增加塑料用量。在中国，在美团和饿了么上经营业务的商家对用户点评依赖度很高，为避免因食物撒漏遭差评，他们宁肯用重一些的餐盒，或多套一层保鲜膜来包裹食物。
“Meituan is deeply committed to reducing the environmental impact of food delivery,” the company said in a statement, pointing to initiatives such as allowing users to choose not to receive disposable tableware.
“美团全心全意致力于减少食物外送对环境的影响，”公司在声明中称，并且提到让用户选择不用一次性餐具之类的措施。
The e-commerce titan Alibaba, which owns Ele.me, declined to comment.
饿了么所有方、电商巨头阿里巴巴拒绝置评。
This deluge of trash might not be such a big problem were China not in the middle of a monumental, if flawed, effort to fix its recycling system. Recycling has long been a gritty, unregulated affair in the country, one driven less by green virtue than by the business opportunity in extracting value out of other people’s leavings.
中国正在展开一场虽有缺漏但规模宏大的行动，以解决其垃圾回收系统的问题，如果不是因为这一点，垃圾泛滥的问题也许不会如此严重。在这个国家，垃圾回收从来是件不受监管的苦差事。其驱动力更多的是从他人的丢弃物中提取价值的商机，而不是出于绿色环保的德行。
The government now wants a recycling industry that doesn’t spoil the environment or sicken workers. The transition hasn’t been smooth.
政府如今想要一个不破坏环境或导致工人患病的回收产业。但这种转型一直都不顺利。
China recently banned many types of scrap from being imported into the country, hoping that recyclers would focus on processing domestic material instead. That killed off a lucrative business for those recyclers, and left American cities scrambling to find new dumping grounds for their cardboard and plastic. Some cities have been forced to end their recycling programs.
中国近年来禁止了多种废品的进口，转而希望回收者能着眼于处理国内废料。然而这就砍掉了垃圾回收商的一项利润丰厚的生意，也让美国城市忙不迭地为它们的纸板和塑料寻找新的倾倒地。一些城市被迫终止了它们的回收计划。
Other policies may inadvertently be causing fewer recyclables to be collected from China’s homes and offices. In Beijing, many scavengers who do this work have fallen victim to an aggressive government campaign to “improve the quality of the city’s population,” a euphemism for driving out migrant workers from the countryside.
其他一些政策可能在不经意间减少了中国家庭和办公场所的可回收物回收量。在北京，政府开展一项“提高城市人口素质”——驱逐农民工的委婉说法——的大规模行动，殃及许多以收废品为业的人。
To clean up the filthy air in Beijing, the government has also clamped down on “small, scattered polluting enterprises” in the capital region. Inspectors have since closed down hundreds of dingy backyard workshops that cleaned and processed plastic scrap.
为清洁北京污浊的空气，政府还取缔了首都地区的“‘小散乱污’企业”。调查人员此后关停了数百家条件恶劣的塑料废品清洁和处理小作坊。
Not everyone mourns the loss. For years, Mao Da, an environmental researcher, has studied the plastic industry in Wen’an County, near Beijing. Workers there used to sort through food and medical waste by hand, he said. Nonrecyclable material was buried in pits near farmland.
有些人不认为这是多大的损失。多年来，环境研究者毛达一直在研究北京附近的文安县的塑料产业。他说那里的从业人员以往都是用手挑拣食品和医疗废物。不可回收材料便在农田旁边挖坑掩埋。
“It was an environmental and public health catastrophe,” Mr. Mao said.
“对当地和区域的环境和公共的健康来说是很大的灾难，”毛达说。
So far, though, the crackdown hasn’t caused large, professionally managed recycling companies to fill the void. Instead, it has left the entire business in limbo.
但目前来看，打击行动并未促使大型专业化回收公司来填补这一空白。相反，这让整个行业陷入不明朗的境地。
“You’ve got fewer people collecting scrap, fewer people transporting it and fewer people processing it,” said Chen Liwen, the founder of Zero-Waste Villages, a nonprofit that promotes recycling in rural China. “The overall recycling rate has definitely fallen.”
“那你前端收的人也少了，中后段清运的人也少了，也没人处理和生产，”致力于推动中国农村回收活动的非营利机构零废弃村落创始人陈立雯说。“回收率各方面肯定就下降了。”
In Chifeng, a small city northeast of Beijing, Zhang Jialin is pondering life after recycling.
在北京东北方向的小城市赤峰，张嘉林在思考不做垃圾回收后该干些什么。
For years, Mr. Zhang and his wife bought plastic scrap and ground it into chips. But the local authorities have stepped up environmental inspections. The city has slated Mr. Zhang’s street for demolition. He and other recyclers believe it is because officials consider their scrapyards an eyesore. The Chifeng government didn’t respond to a request for comment.
多年来，张嘉林夫妇采购塑料废品然后碾成碎片。但当地政府开始加紧环境检查。张嘉林所在街道已被市里划入拆除范围。他和其他回收者认为，这是因为官员觉得他们的废品堆放场太碍眼。赤峰市政府未回应置评请求。
“What I do is environmental protection,” Mr. Zhang, 45, said. “I don’t let stuff get thrown everywhere. I break it down. I wash it.”
“本身我就是搞环保的，”45岁的张嘉林说。“我没让它去乱排乱扔。我是把它打碎了，洗干净了。”
He continued: “So why do the environmental protection authorities target me as if I were harming environmental protection? That’s what I don’t get.”
他接着说：“为什么环保治理我，说我是破坏环保的？这是一个问号。”