A waste-less festive season
2025-01-17
| Policy Research and Advocacy Team, Friends of the Earth (HK)
As Chinese New Year approaches, we celebrate the festival with our
family and relatives. In celebrating abundance and prosperity, families tend to
feel overly generous. Retailers feed on the need to spend with colourful
decorations and sales promotions. Behind the happy scenes of delicious food, gifts
exchanges and gatherings, it’s important to reflect on the environmental impact
of our celebrations. The generosity and exuberance of the season often lead to
excessive consumption and waste, with significant consequences for the planet.
One of the most iconic symbols of Chinese New Year is the red
packet, or lai see, given as a gesture of blessing and good fortune. The
environmental cost of this tradition can be staggering. We go through 320
million red packets every year, equivalent to deforesting 16,300 trees.[1]While reusable red packets are more common nowadays, many red packets are still
designed with zodiac signs or surnames that make them difficult to reuse.
Giving and
receiving red packets is a tradition during Chinese New Year (Source: HK01)
New Year celebrations also create a lot of organic waste. Families
often over-order or over-prepare to cater to the tradition of abundance. A local
survey found that 40% of interviewees had unfinished food after new year
celebrations, and 60% had leftovers from meals.[2]Then there are the food items that are bought mostly for good luck and usually
go uneaten, like the year cake, pomelo, and mandarins. These extra waste puts
further pressure on the landfills and releases methane, a greenhouse gas
contributing to global warming.[3]
What can we do?
- Plan meals
carefully: Order or prepare just the right amount of food to avoid leftovers
- Repurpose
leftovers: Turn uneaten dishes into new meals to minimise waste
- Share surplus
food: Donate excess food to local food banks or charities
- Bring reusable
containers: When dining out, bring your own containers to take home leftovers
Chinese New Year
pop-up market at Yuen Long, Hong Kong (Source: Healpy Post)
How can we cut down on other festive waste? Before buying gifts for
our family and relatives, consider that more and more people do not care for
receiving presents nowadays. Instead of material gifts, going on a hike or
visiting museums may be a more memorable experience. If you do have to buy
presents, try to buy gifts that are not excessively packaged. For those of you
that need to give red packets, see if sending digital red packets works.If physical red packets are still preferred, see if you have red packets from last year to reuse or participate
in red packet recycling programs offered by some organisations.
Electronic red
packets is a more environmental-friendly choice compared to the traditional
ones (Source: SCMP)
Chinese New Year is a celebration of abundance and prosperity, but
we should be careful it does not become one of excess and waste. We should shop
wisely and rationally, gifting experiences and cherishing food. Let us change
and shape a green Chinese New Year with less waste.