"Tea leaves 2 taels, packaging 2 pounds"... When is over-packing!

Xinhua Viewpoint|"Tea 2 taels, packaging 2 pounds"...... When is over-packing!

Hangzhou, 3 Mar (Xinhua) -- Title: "30 taels of tea, 2 jin of packaging" ... When is over-packing!

Xu Shunda, Yin Xiaosheng, and Cui Li, reporters from Xinhua News Agency's "Xinhua Viewpoint."

Tens of grams of tea leaves are packed into all kinds of beautiful bottles, plus foam, partitions, cartons, and the packaging is several times or even ten times heavier than tea... Before the Qingming Festival, the market ushered in a wave of new tea on the market, and the problem of excessive packaging was once again highlighted. The "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporter launched an investigation into this.

The phenomenon of "tea 2 taels and packaging 2 pounds" is common

The reporter recently saw in a tea sales store in Hangzhou that a 120-gram Longjing tea was packed in two sealed aluminum-plastic bags, stuffed into two ceramic jars printed with cherry blossom patterns, and covered with large cardboard boxes. The carton is stuck in Styrofoam covered with yellow satin, covered with a large box, covered with shiny metal packaging, and then put in a large pocket of hard paper. The weight of the entire package is measured to 1.5 kg.

At a tea shop on Wulin Road in Hangzhou, a Longjing tea gift box priced at 980 yuan weighed more than 1 kilogram, and the actual net weight of tea was only 150 grams. The clerk said that this best-selling tea gift is exquisitely packaged and decent, and many customers buy two boxes at a time.

Sun Bin, secretary of the general branch of the party in Wengjiashan Village, West Lake District, Hangzhou, who has operated West Lake Longjing for many years, introduced that tea packaging on the market is mainly divided into three types: the first is high-end gift attributes, mainly porcelain bottles and handmade bags; The second is the general gift attribute, with a unified packaging and an iron gift box marked with "so-and-so tea"; The third is the tea-like attribute of small packaging, which often has a strong sense of design and high fashion.

Industry insiders said that many high-end gift teas are packaged with lacquered wooden boxes and bamboo boxes on the outside, and porcelain bottles, clay pots and handmade tin cans on the inside, and the cost of the packaging box alone reaches hundreds of yuan. Some of the luxurious tea gift boxes have a packaging volume of 3 to 5 times the actual volume, and the cost even exceeds the tea itself.

"The better the packaging, the higher the tea premium." A tea agent revealed that the gift attributes of tea are strong, and the material, color system, shape, etc. of the packaging have an important impact on the price. For example, a certain Wuyi rock tea, only 50 grams of tea is packed in a mahogany gift box weighing two or three kilograms, the cost of the gift box reaches 200 yuan, and the tea price is as high as 6000,<> yuan.

Since October last year, Zhejiang Tailai Packaging Technology Co., Ltd. has successively received tea packaging orders, and 10,50 sets of tea gift boxes have been ordered, which can be used to pack 25,<> jin of tea. Li Li, general manager of the enterprise, revealed that tea has higher and higher requirements for packaging, and the proportion of small batches and personalized orders is increasing.

Excessive packaging has multiple social impacts

Excessive packaging of tea has a certain universality and long-term nature. Recently, the China Consumer Association organized professional investigators to conduct a search for excessive packaging problems in four commodity categories of edible agricultural products, tea, toys and baby products on mainstream e-commerce platforms, and identified 2830 tea, 900 edible agricultural products, 920 toys and 1510 baby products a total of 6160 products through the subjective judgment of excessive packaging void rate by visual inspection, of which the proportion of tea over-packaging was 11.2%.

Many respondents believe that moderate tea packaging design is conducive to sales, but excessive packaging will bring multiple negative social impacts.

The first is to cause waste of resources and environmental pollution. Studies have shown that China's packaging waste accounts for about 30% to 40% of urban solid waste, and most of these packaging wastes are generated by excessive packaging. Jiang Aiqin, general manager of Hangzhou Longguan Industrial Co., Ltd., said that many tea gift boxes cannot be reused, in addition to being used as tea storage cans, snack storage and other purposes, they can basically only be discarded as household garbage, and the subsequent processing cost is very high.

Secondly, the emphasis on "appearance" exceeds the quality, and flashiness distorts the development of the tea market. The reporter learned that adding a little packaging cost, the price can often rise sharply, so some tea companies work more on the outer packaging rather than the quality of tea. Chen Fuqiao, an associate researcher at the Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, revealed that the price of some beautifully packaged tea is not low, but the actual quality is not high, and there are many problems in picking and processing.

It is particularly noteworthy that many beautifully packaged tea gift boxes are regarded as gifts. Kang Qingxia, general manager of Shiyi Tea Farm in Moganshan Town, Deqing County, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, said that in order to meet the needs of gifts, some tea merchants have deliberately made the packaging extremely exquisite, and the three layers inside and three layers outside are very precious.

The relevant person in charge of the Hangzhou West Lake District Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision introduced that behind the luxury tea gift box, there are often hidden "four winds" problems such as illegal receipt and delivery of tea gifts, recycling of tea gift cash, and illegal procurement of public funds. The reporter saw on second-hand trading platforms such as Xianyu that many sellers sold tea gifts, with prices ranging from a few hundred yuan to thousands of yuan.

Strictly implement standards and strengthen effective supervision

The latest revision of the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) "Requirements for Limiting Excessive Packaging of Commodities Food and Cosmetics" will be implemented from September 2023, and this mandatory national standard covers 9 types of food and 31 types of cosmetics, including tea, alcohol, etc.

The new standard clearly stipulates the number of packaging layers and packaging costs: grain and its processed products should not exceed three layers, and other commodities should not exceed four layers; The production organization shall take measures to control the cost of all packaging, except those in direct contact with the contents, not to exceed 20% of the sales price of the product.

Yang Jianhua, president of the Zhejiang Sociological Society, believes that "human favor" and "face" indirectly push up the value of tea, which is contrary to the concept of green and low-carbon development and simple and sincere people's customs, and the hidden risks of "festival corruption" and "human favor corruption" are more worthy of vigilance. Relevant departments should urge tea enterprises to rectify and meet the standards as soon as possible during the transition period, take the new standards as a starting point, reduce resource consumption and packaging waste generation from the source, and strengthen warning education at the social level.

Chen Fuqiao believes that tea is still thrifty, and simplicity has always been one of the aesthetic meanings of China's tea culture, and now people's awareness of environmental protection is getting stronger and stronger, and the country's efforts to environmental protection are becoming greater and greater. Although brand building is inseparable from packaging, if tea companies blindly pursue complex and exquisite packaging, it will not only violate the cultural connotation and market development trend of tea, but also may damage the corporate image.

Chen Fuqiao suggested that the government industry department should guide tea enterprises to keep up with the times, grasp the market, make more efforts in tea quality and taste, introduce more recyclable environmentally friendly materials into tea packaging, promote simplified packaging, return to and tap the connotation of tea culture, so as to obtain lasting recognition from consumers and promote the sustainable and healthy development of the tea industry.

In addition, industry insiders suggest that we should vigorously rectify unhealthy practices such as extravagant gift giving to prevent "corruption of human favors". For many consecutive years, the Xihu District Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision has organized and carried out special supervision during the spring tea marketing season, comprehensively investigating the purchase of public funds and illegal receipt and delivery of "sky-high tea" through departmental linkage, overt inspection and covert visits, etc., to strictly prevent the invisible mutation "four winds" behind tea. In the past five years, a total of 5 party-member cadres who bought tea at public funds and accepted tea ceremonies in violation of laws and regulations were investigated and dealt with. In the next step, special supervision will continue to be carried out, with "tea" to tree "character", and "clear tea" with "fresh breeze". (Xinhuanet)