Earth Chat

A waste-less festive season




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.



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