The over packaging of food and cosmetics can be described as a "burden": it is not only useless to keep, but also a pity to discard, which is easy to cause waste of resources and environmental pollution. Recently, China's State Administration of market regulation issued the newly revised mandatory national standard "requirements for food and cosmetics to restrict excessive packaging of goods", which will "reduce the burden" on the problem of excessive packaging.

In recent years, in pursuit of high profits, some food and cosmetics enterprises have designed and used packages with too many layers, too large voids and too high costs, and added packaging costs to consumers, which not only caused waste of resources and environmental pollution, but also damaged the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.

Chenhongjun, deputy director of the Department of standards and technology of the State Administration of market supervision, said when interpreting the newly issued standards that the research shows that China's packaging waste accounts for about 30% to 40% of urban domestic waste, most of which is produced by excessive packaging.

According to Chen Hongjun, the new standard covers 31 categories of food and 16 categories of cosmetics, including tea, alcohol, cakes, health food, etc. The requirements for the number of layers of packaging are strictly limited. The grain and its processed products in food should not exceed three layers of packaging, and other food and cosmetics should not exceed four layers of packaging.

Chen Hongjun said that after the release of the new standard, food and cosmetics manufacturers need to carry out compliance design of product packaging according to the requirements of the new standard. At the same time, they need to consume inventory packaging and goods for sale, especially cosmetics, which have a relatively long shelf life and a relatively long consumption cycle in circulation. In order to avoid the impact on production and business activities and new waste, a two-year transition period has been set up on the basis of extensive consultation with relevant industrial departments, industry associations and enterprises.

Chen Hongjun said that according to Article 25 of the standardization law, products and services that do not meet mandatory standards may not be produced, sold, imported or provided. After the two-year implementation transition period, the reproduction and sale of food and cosmetics that do not meet the new standards are not allowed in the market. He called on enterprises to rectify and meet the standards as soon as possible during the transition period. At the same time, it also calls on consumers to try not to buy over packaged goods and practice the concept of green and low-carbon consumption with their own actions.

As for how to distinguish "excessive packaging", Wei Hong, deputy director of the Department of standards and technology of the State Administration of market supervision, said that consumers can generally judge whether goods belong to excessive packaging by "one look, two questions and three calculations". "One look" is to see whether the outer packaging of goods is luxury packaging and whether the packaging materials are expensive materials; "Two questions" is to ask the number of layers of packaging without unpacking, and judge whether the packaging of grain and its processed products exceeds three layers, and whether the packaging of other types of food and cosmetics exceeds four layers; "Three calculations" means to measure or estimate the volume of the outer package and compare it with the maximum allowable outer package volume to see whether it exceeds the standard.

"As long as one of the above three aspects does not meet the requirements, it can be preliminarily determined that it does not meet the standard requirements. From the perspective of green environmental protection, we suggest that consumers should avoid buying over packaged goods." Wei Hong said.