WITH climate change becoming an existential threat, it is a must that we resolve to have a nature- and climate-friendly celebration of the New Year.
Oh yes, there are acts that we should avoided during the New Year’s Eve countdown to prevent environmental pollution such as lighting firecrackers and fireworks, releasing balloons, setting off sky lanterns, burning trash and used tires, and littering.
We instead advise all sectors to keep the 2020 countdown activities as ecological as possible. Event organizers should refrain from doing things that tend to contaminate the air, land and water with wastes and toxins that can harm humans and other living things.
Local governments, media outfits, shopping malls, hotels, resorts, and households should put the protection of the natural environment a top priority in the many exciting events being planned to ring in the New Year. Ensuring that planned events will cause no harm to the environment and the climate is necessary to protect the right of the people to a balanced and healthful ecology as enshrined in the nation’s Constitution.
The ostentatious use of firecrackers and fireworks on New Year’s Eve blankets communities with health-damaging toxic smog and should be totally avoided. Money intended for firecrackers and fireworks, which also end up as hazardous litter, should be used instead to support relief and reconstruction efforts in disaster-stricken communities such as those devastated by earthquakes and typhoon “Ursula.”
Releasing balloons, too, at the stroke of midnight is not encouraged as these will subsequently pop and fall to earth as dangerous marine litter causing harm to aquatic animals that mistakenly eat the balloon pieces or get tangled up in balloon strings.
Like balloons, sky lanterns can cause injury and death to animals by the ingestion, entanglement and entrapment in the fallen lantern frames. Sky lanterns may also cause structural fires as well as wildfires, particularly when a lantern lands while the flame is still burning.
Revelers are also urged not to set rubbish and used tires on fire; burning creates a toxic cocktail of fine particulates, heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants or POPs like dioxins.
And before we forget, merrymakers, especially those who plan to greet the New Year in public parks, must not to leave food waste and other trash behind. Let us keep our parks clean, tidy and safe by not littering, smoking and vaping there at all times.
Yes, let us have an ecological New Year celebration for a change.
