In the summer of May of this year, when a reporter entered the Qingtian tableware factory in Chongqing, he discovered that the environmental protection enterprise that was started in July last year and had aroused widespread concern and cheers from the community was actually a depression.

Director Liu Hong said in frustration: As the market demand is too small, there is a serious backlog of environmental protection tableware. Since February of this year, the factory has completely ceased production. If there is no further turnaround, only the sales machines will be closed. Like the Qingtian tableware factory, which is struggling to survive, more than a dozen companies in Chongqing that produce environmentally-friendly cutlery are also ill-fated. The overwhelming majority of them are bustling and open-mouthed. They are sober and close, and none of them stands firm in market competition.

According to a survey by the Chongqing Green Volunteers Federation, only the city of Chongqing consumes 600,000 disposable tableware every day. The vast majority are non-degradable plastic tableware, of which more than 80% are not recycled. Scientific research shows that foamed plastic lunch boxes made of expanded polystyrene, polyethylene or polypropylene generally take 200 years to be decomposed by microorganisms in the natural environment and become water and other organic matter.

Undoubtedly, as the largest city in the Three Gorges reservoir area, Chongqing needs to pay more attention to environmental protection than other big cities. From a commercial point of view, the prevention and control of “white pollution” in the Three Gorges reservoir area is behind huge market potential and business opportunities. Liu Hong has this idea. His confidence comes from multi-party "good" market analysis: After the Three Gorges Project began impounding water in June of this year, Chongqing will likely become one of the most environmentally friendly cities in the country. The government's support for environmental protection products will increase, and policies will increase. There is a guarantee that the disposable tableware market in Chongqing has great potential, and the “green tableware” he invests in can completely replace the disposable plastic tableware on the market, and the market will have guarantees; at the same time, due to the wide range of sources of annual herbaceous plants in Chongqing, raw materials Basically, the production capacity is also guaranteed.

After careful preparation, in the summer of 2002, Chongqing Qingtian Tableware Factory opened up in the praise of the community. As a company that produces green environmental protection tableware, the factory strictly implements the "National Standard for the General Specifications of Degradable Tableware for Disposables". The quality of the product fully meets the relevant national quality, hygiene and environmental protection standards, and has obtained corresponding inspection certificates. The environmentally-friendly tableware produced by the factory is made of straw, wheat straw, bagasse, corn cobs and other raw materials that have been smashed and foamed, plus a certain proportion of flour. It can be completely biodegraded, bury it in the soil and begin to degrade and differentiate after 10 minutes. After 7 weeks, it is mixed with soil. Together, it becomes organic fertilizer.

"Before I started, I was full of hope, but I did not expect that the reality is so disappointing." Liu Hong looked at the piled product very helpless.

The daily production of Qingtian cutlery reached 120,000 at the beginning of the beginning, but because the market did not buy it, Qingtian cutlery faced great survival challenges at the beginning. In the city's share of disposable cutlery usage of 600,000 units, Qingtian’s orders accounted for only 0.003%, and Liu Hong’s goal of achieving a market share of 5% in two months was lost. Until the production was stopped at the beginning of the year, the factory had already lost more than 500,000 yuan, and there were more than 1 million pieces of tableware products in the warehouse.