Environment-friendly funerals pose challenge to traditional values

When it comes to combating global warming, it is not just a matter of changing your daily lifestyle, but can also involve the way you are buried.

Activists are promoting green funerals, which challenge traditional Chinese values in blessing and showing respect for the dead.

Hospital Authority planning director Vivian Wong Taam Chi-woon, a board member of Friends of the Earth, opted for a green funeral for her father, Taam Kwan-yuen, who recently died aged 96.

Dr Wong's family has ordered an eco-coffin from the mainland made from recycled paper, coated with environment-friendly paint, and free from metal decorations and impurities. No special offerings will be placed in the coffin, while her father will be dressed only in his favourite clothes and shoes, along with the pair of glasses he used to wear.

To fulfil the last wish of her father for a memorial to him as someone who was born and raised in Hong Kong, she will cast his ashes into the sea after his cremation. Relatives have been urged to make donations to green groups rather than send wreaths of flowers.

Dr Wong hoped her father's funeral would help make a difference, no matter how small, to combating the deterioration of the environment.

'Being simple does not mean being raw. A green funeral can be as solemn as a splendid one,' she said.