Meituan Releases 2021 Corporate Social Responsibility Report

Beijing-based local e-commerce platform Meituan announced on Wednesday its recent efforts and achievements in helping the elderly, assisting delivery drivers and green consumption in its “2021 Corporate Social Responsibility Report.”

According to the report, in 2021, the number of restaurants offering smaller dishes and the number of small dishes increased by 50% year-on-year. Also in 2021, users actively searched for keywords such as “smaller dishes” and “half dishes” nearly 6.1 million times on Meituan, up by 38% year-on-year. Finally, the turnover of “half-dish, smaller dishes, smaller-dish package, and single-person package” increased by 46% compared with 2020.

As takeout consumers increase, environmental protection caused by the large scale of the food delivery industry has attracted the attention of all parties. As early as 2017, Meituan and a competing platform called Ele.me launched the “Green Mountain Project” and “Blue Planet Project,” respectively. Both plans are committed to the solutions of environmental protection in the food delivery industry, and publicity and research of environmental protection. These two platforms now provide users with the option of requesting disposable cutlery with their orders. The report suggests that by the end of 2021, more than 100 million Meituan Takeout users opted out of disposable cutlery.

In January this year, Wang Bin, the deputy director general of the Consumption Promotion Department of China’s Ministry of Commerce, announced the measures and achievements of promoting green consumption in the country. Wang explained that in the first three quarters of 2021, the number of merchants providing smaller dishes on food and beverage delivery platforms increased by 25.4% year-on-year, and the number of consumers choosing food without cutlery exceeded 100 million.

SEE ALSO: Baidu Releases 2021 ESG Report, Betting on a Greener Future

In addition to green consumption, the CSR report revealed that in order to help the elderly, Meituan has launched a digital interface that is more convenient for older users. For example, as of March this year, the “Care Edition” of Meituan’s tickets service served more than 4.14 million elderly. As for delivery drivers, by the end of 2021, the public welfare program initiated by Meituan had helped 296 drivers’ children suffering from serious illness and accidental injury in the industry, and provided 10.487 million yuan ($1.55 million). Meituan also returned commissions of over 30 million yuan to small and medium-sized merchants affected by the pandemic and difficulties in operations, and presented smart devices to 20,000 newly launched merchants.