Taiwan opts for greener festivals

In a sign of Taiwan’s growing environmental awareness, locals have begun opting for greener ways of carrying out traditions during major festivals.

The burning of paper money to honour deceased ancestors is one of the key traditions of many Taiwanese festivals, including the Tomb Sweeping Festival, and one which has significantly increased air pollution.

After the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) alerted the island to the environmental impacts of burning paper money, Taiwanese have begun discussing more sustainable ways to honour their ancestors.

Taiwan’s Tomb Sweeping Festival is held annually on April 5, coinciding with the anniversary of the death of president Chiang Kai Shek in 1975. Families pay respect to their ancestors by sweeping their tombs, offering food to the dead, burning incense on graveyards and burning wads of paper money.

According to the EPA, efforts to introduce ‘greener’ alternatives to these traditional rituals have lowered this level of air pollution significantly in the last few years,

‘The key is to promote environmental awareness under the framework of local cultures so the plan can be feasible,’ said Jennifer Chang, director of the Bureau of Environmental Protection in Tainan City.

Alternatives include the burning of blank cheques instead of wads of paper cash that produces thousands of tons of CO2 emissions each year. The EPA has also implemented collective paper money burning projects involving pollution control devices and energy conversion to generate electricity.

‘The public has become increasingly open to the idea of eco-friendly tomb-sweeping methods since nobody likes heavy smoke, ‘ said Hsieh Yein-rui, head of the EPA Air Quality Management and Noise Control Department.

As well as considering eco-friendly alternatives to the traditional paper money, the public has also been encouraged to pay their respects to ancestors online.