For better air, more people have said ‘no’ to fireworks this year

welcomed its least smoky Spring Festival for years. As of New Year’s Eve, sales of fireworks in Beijing were 34 percent lower than the previous year, and there was a similar trend in many other cities. Comments:

Together with the falling sales of fireworks, over 530 cities have issued new regulations that limit their use this year, which shows it is increasingly common for cities to want to smoke less over the festive period. This common sense would be impossible without the anti-graft storm, which curbed officials’ luxurious lifestyles and discouraged them from taking every opportunity to show off their wealth, as government departments used to purchase large quantities of firecrackers as gifts for officials to celebrate the festival.

The effect fireworks have on air quality is astonishing: the concentration of PM2.5 particles can temporarily double when large quantities of fireworks are set off. Air pollutants multiply every New Year’s Eve for this reason. It is necessary to change this practice for cleaner air.

The idea of prohibiting fireworks first emerged in the 1980s, and some cities tried to ban them years ago, but the bans did not gain popular support until this year. It is ordinary people’s stronger sense of environmental protection that helps – increasingly more people want to celebrate Lunar New Year without the bad air and noise. It is also time to strengthen environmental education so that more old, bad habits get abolished.

While urbanites have been saying “no” to fireworks, sales of fireworks in many rural areas continued to rise this year, and the chief reason was that many migrant workers hoped to tell their neighbors by setting off fireworks they had earned a lot of money while they were away. Fireworks bring many villages air pollution and it is urgent to change the practice.