Firework sales drop for sixth year in a row
Fewer people celebrate Spring Festival with a bang as city calls for cleaner air
Sales of fireworks and firecrackers continued on a downward trend this year, with sales in the capital falling by more than 30 percent, marking the sixth consecutive annual decline since 2012, the city’s fireworks authority said on Monday.
The reason for the decline was because residents had responded to the authority’s call for a reduction in the usage of fireworks, it said.
“Fireworks are not essential for creating a festival atmosphere. We can also hang lanterns to celebrate in a traditional manner ,” said Z hang Zhenyu, a resident in the capital’s Chaoyang district.
The 30-year-old said he hasn’t set off fireworks since his daughter was born three years ago. “My daughter often gets sick during smoggy weather. Setting off fireworks could result in smog, and I don’t want my daughter, or others, to get sick,” he said.
Beijing experienced heavy smog on Saturday after a firework frenzy marked the end of the annual Spring Festival celebrations with a bang.
The period, which starts on Chinese New Year’s Eve and ends on Lantern Festival — this year running from Jan 28 until Saturday—is the only time fireworks are allowed to be set off within the Fifth Ring Road.
According to the city government, more than 791 metric tons of waste from fireworks and firecrackers were cleared during the period, a decrease of 18.9 percent year-on-year.
Air quality data showed concentration levels of PM2.5 — fine particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, which is hazardous — increased as families marked the end of the festivities in traditional style.
The concentration level of PM2.5 in the capital’s southwest was 76 micrograms per cubic meter at 6 pm. By 8 pm, it had risen to 203, and an hour later, it hit 335, according to the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center.
The highest concentration recorded was 820 at the Xizhimen monitoring station on the Second Ring Road.
The center said 16 percent of PM2.5 was caused by potassium ion, which is produced by fireworks.
Smog is forecast to hit parts of northern and central China on Tuesday, including Beijing and Tianjin, and the provinces of Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong and Hen an, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said onMonday, adding that it is expected to linger until the arrival of a cold front on Thursday.
DURING THIS YEAR’S Spring Festival, sales of fireworks in Beijing were by nearly one-third less than the year before, as a result, there were fewer alarms and injuries than last year. Beijing News commented on Monday:
Having experienced the severe Lunar New Year air pollution in previous years, as a consequence of people setting off fireworks to celebrate the Spring Festival, residents in Beijing generally frowned upon fireworks this year.
Before Spring Festival, the results of a survey by the Beijing Municipal Social and Public Opinion Survey Center showed that more than 80 percent of the capital’s residents planned not to set off fireworks.
The authorities have made significant achievements in raising residents’ awareness of the risks and downsides of fireworks including the fire risks and deterioration of the living environment in the capital.
But as well as these obvious issues, fireworks also increase the cost and burden of running the city each year before Spring Festival as the municipal government has to invest a lot of manpower to alert residents to the risks and enforce the ban in areas where fireworks are forbidden.
It can be said that the setting off of fireworks has become not only a risk but also a burden.
It is natural therefore to wonder if people would accept a total ban on fireworks.