TODAY is the 13th China’s Singles’ Day shopping spree. The annual event was first started by Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Nov. 11, 2009, and quickly grew into a major online shopping festival.

The event’s support for green consumption and the healthy development of e-commerce platforms become more impressive this year.

Also known as Double Eleven, the festival is no longer simply a consumption extravaganza but also a platform for promoting the concept of building a better life, according to Chris Tung, chief marketing officer at Alibaba Group.

This year marks the largest Singles’ Day shopping festival on Tmall, with a record 290,000 brands participating and more than 14 million varieties of commodities offering discounts, according to the company. However, instead of simply luring consumers to sweep up the goods, the company has started encouraging them to shop “greener.”

At 1 a.m. Nov. 1, an hour into Tmall’s first three-day discount period, over 25,000 water-saving flush toilets were swept away.

“If each toilet is used five times per day on average, then 225 tons of water can be saved in a day,” said the company.

Tmall plans to issue 100 million yuan (US$17.2 million) of green vouchers this year, encouraging consumers to buy energy-efficient home appliances and products with “green” certificates, as part of the efforts to support the country’s carbon-reduction goals.

Besides, 60,000 courier stations under Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao Network have prepared 7.5 million eggs as a reward for consumers recycling the parcel boxes.

“I have recycled 11 parcel boxes during this year’s Singles’ Day shopping spree, and the reward makes me feel encouraged and proud that I can make my own contribution to saving energy,” said a resident in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province.

E-commerce giant JD.com has also joined the “low carbon” campaign, developing recyclable packaging, deploying new-energy cargo vans and adopting photovoltaic power generation in warehousing.

“E-commerce platforms have a natural advantage in promoting green consumption, and they can help establish a full green supply chain,” said Jin Min, a professor with the Renmin University of China, adding that the Double Eleven shopping spree can help leverage the huge green consumer market.

(Xinhua)