Last Saturday (25 August) was the Hungry Ghost Festival, also known as Yu Lan Festival, and people carried out various activities to ‘celebrate’ this festival. The Yu Lan Festival is a traditional Chinese festival which takes place on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month. Similar to the Western Halloween, it is believed that all ghosts would be able to freely transfer between the human world and the hell on the Ghost Day as the gate to the Underworld is opened once a year on that day.
In order to avoid being ‘followed’ and ‘harassed’ by the ghosts, many Chinese would try to appease and please them by means of offering food and drinks, burning incense and joss paper, and performing Chinese opera for the ghosts. However, among all the practices, burning incense and joss paper has long been disliked and complained by many people as it usually takes place in public areas such that the streets would be full of ashes and smoke, thus causing not only an unpleasant smell, but also fire and air pollution. Moreover, it is not just a practice for the Yu Lan Festival as people would burn joss paper on special occasions to worship their ancestors.
The Environmental Protection Department has set some guidelines on environmental worshipping so as to minimize the negative impacts of the burning activities, such as asking premise owners to prohibit people from carrying out burning activities, and encouraging people to use alternative forms of worshipping, like electronic offering. But they were not as effective as expected since they are only guidelines and suggestions for advising related parties and has no deterrent effect.
On the other hand, the Hong Kong Productivity Council has invented an air pollution control device called Joss Paper Furnace which can remove the particles in the smoke produced from burning activities, thus allowing people to worship their ancestors and ghosts in a clean way. The Joss Paper Furnace makes use of the ventilation principle to draw the black smoke generated from burning into a water scrubber which has a water spray device, in which the larger dust particles would be washed away while the smaller particles would be collected by an electrostatic precipitator, and the purified smoke would be pumped into a discharged fan and released as clean air. Also, the water used to clean the dark smoke will be recycled and reused so as to prevent water waste.
Although the invention of Joss Paper Furnace might be able to reduce and eliminate most of the air pollutants generated from the burning of incense and joss paper, it is still recommended that people should adopt a more environmentally-friendly way to worship ancestors.
