Low Carbon Chinese New Year Celebration

The celebration for this year Chinese New Year comes to an end with the life comes back to normal. Students are going to school again this coming Monday and many especially the Hokkien clan will get the festive mood over after the 9th Day of the CNY.

One of the reports attracted me the most is about low carbon celebration. It was reported that in China, many youth have less spending on unsustainable consumption and lifestyle as a good gesture towards carbon emission reduction and challenge of climate change. They went for non-motorised travelling, ate more vegetables, burn less fire works and fire crackers as well as practicing 3R for excessive stuffs. The sudden awareness on green was due to the failure of Copenhagen Roundatable in agreeing to curb the problems of climate change.

In Malaysia, I can sense similar actions for economic reason rather than environmental concern. I went for marketing of roasted meat at SS2 on the new year eve and to my surprise I need not wait for long and went to few shops to buy it. In previous year, I would consider myself lucky for buying the stuff at last minute shopping. Based on last year experience of not getting a restaurant for my family new year eve reunion dinner, I made an advance booking at a restaurant. However, to my pleasant, the restaurant was not fully occupied. Similarly, I was made to understand from the street hawkers that sale for mandarin oranges, decorative items, cookies and etc was not encouraging at all.

While businesses are worried about purchasing pattern during festive season, more people are concern on what can they do for the environment during the festive season. MyCAT, a coalition of NGOs in protecting the tigers and Maybank for example come together to launch a campaign for protecting the tiger during this Lunar "Tiger" Year. MBPJ, Lions Clubs and TetraPak are launching the campaign of collecting beverage packets as festive season always see the number of used packets increasing and being throw away.

Perhaps it is time now for businesses to think about capturing the market for low carbon festive season celebration instead of complaining about losing business sale. The Green Market is obviously lot and more to come.