White Pollution from Plastic Flowers for Qingming Festival

The Chinese Qingming Festival, also known as Treading Green Festival, Hsing Qing Festival, March Festival and Ancestor Sacrifice Festival, is one of the traditional Chinese festivals and one of the most important sacrificial festivals. Qingming Festival usually falls between April 4 and 6 on the Gregorian calendar, when mid-spring meets late spring. It is the Qingming Festival among the 24 solar terms in the Chinese lunar calendar, and is the only festival that coincides with a solar term.

During the Qingming Festival, the use of sacrificial offerings that are not easily degradable, such as plastic flowers, is closely related to the problem of plastic pollution.

Sources of plastic pollution

Plastic sacrificial offerings:

In recent years, many people choose to use plastic flowers, plastic fake Yuanbao, and plastic offerings instead of traditional paper money or flowers, believing that these items are more durable and convenient. However, these plastic products are difficult to degrade and may remain in the environment for hundreds of years, polluting soil and water.

Disposable items:

Plastic bags, plastic bottles, and disposable tableware used in grave-sweeping can exacerbate the garbage problem if they are discarded haphazardly.

Excessive packaging:

Qingming offerings (such as joss sticks and paper money) are often wrapped in multiple layers of plastic film, generating a large amount of packaging waste.

Environmental hazards of plastic sacrificial offerings

Difficult to degrade: Plastic is difficult to degrade in nature, and the general degradation cycle is hundreds of years. Plastic flowers and other sacrificial offerings belong to the “white pollution” plastic garbage.

Pollution of soil and water: Long-term accumulation of plastic offerings will cause soil deterioration, damage to the environment, and seriously affect the growth of crops. After being thrown into rivers and lakes, it will make the water quality deteriorate and form a vicious water cycle.

Threat to human and animal health: plastic garbage can affect health and even cause death when it is accidentally eaten.

Fire Hazard: Plastic offerings are flammable and can easily cause forest fires, leaving great potential danger to wild ecological safety.

Responses from all sectors of society

Government departments: Market supervision, civil affairs, environmental protection and other departments in many places jointly carried out special rectification actions to investigate the illegal sale of plastic sacrificial offerings and promote the concept of civilized sacrificial offerings.

Merchants: Some merchants have begun to respond to the call to stop selling plastic sacrificial offerings and instead offer flowers and other environmentally friendly sacrificial offerings.

Public: More and more people recognize the harm of plastic flower sacrifice, and actively choose flower sacrifice, Internet sacrifice and other civilized and environmentally friendly ways to remember the deceased.

How to Reduce Plastic Pollution at Qingming Festival?

Switch to environmentally friendly offerings

- Use fresh flowers (e.g. chrysanthemums, lilies) instead of plastic flowers.

- Choose biodegradable paper money or smoke-free offerings.

Reduce disposable items

- Bring your own cups and cutlery and avoid using plastic bottles and disposable items.

- Use cloth bags or bamboo baskets for offerings, and reduce the use of plastic bags.

Civilized Sacrifice, Take Away Trash

- Don't throw away plastic garbage and clean up the place when you leave.

Promote the concept of green rituals

- Advocate for families and communities to adopt more environmentally friendly ways of offering sacrifices, such as planting trees in remembrance and electronic candles.

In summary, the use of plastic sacrificial offerings during the Qingming Festival has caused serious plastic pollution problems to the environment. Various sectors of the community are taking active measures to promote civilized and environmentally friendly ways of offering sacrifices, so as to reduce plastic pollution, use of biodegradable products and protect the ecological environment.