Yunnan province in Southwest China is a multicultural, beautiful place and a hotbed of biodiversity. Many rural people rely almost solely on firewood for their energy needs of cooking and heating. Over collection of firewood is the most immediate and significant threat to biodiversity in Northwest Yunnan, because of the amount of deforestation and destruction of habitat that takes place to harvest the wood. The use of biogas digesters and efficient stoves is increasing, however, which is in turn decreasing the need for wood, saving time and labor for rural people.
This new video is also a result of the video training meeting held in Beijing in April. This one comes from our Hong Kong team comprised of Serene Wei Wei Gao, Tennia Yue Zhao, Andrew Stevenson, and Alley Pezanoski-Browne. The video alerts the viewer to the growing problem of waste in Hong Kong and explores the underlying reasons for materialism and consumption. It also offers suggestions on how people can reduce the environmental footprint of their shopping and consumption.
Last time on Sun Zhe’s Adventures, our hero lined up some hot dates while touting the advantages of his bike and the bus even in the face of Beijing air pollution and traffic. This time, he has a new crush, Zhu Ying, who is as green as they come. Let’s see how Sun Zhe fares on his “green date.”
This episode, produced by Kunming Green Sisters Ouyang and Jenny, tells about “No Car Day”. What kind of effect does this once-a-month activity have on the city of Kunming? What do the local people think about it? Watch to find out.
September 22 was “No Car Day” around the world, but Kunming is the only Chinese city to have a “No Car Day” every month, held on the last Saturday from 9am to 5pm. The policy has its limitations, of course. Rather than fully banning cars throughout the entire city, only private cars are forbidden to enter the first ring road. Taxis, buses, bikes, scooters, and special purpose vehicles (or vehicles with greater than 17 seats that are more than 50% full) are allowed to travel anywhere in the city. Additionally, cars with odd plates can drive on odd months (even plates on even months) between the first and second ring roads. Any car can drive outside of the second ring.
The policy seems to have mixed results. On September 22, the Kunming Environmental Bureau reported much better air quality due to the limitation of private cars. “Carbon monoxide levels dropped 32.9 percent, nitrogen dioxide levels dropped 45.1 percent, ozone was down 39.5 percent, carbon dioxide was down 15.4 percent and airborne particulate matter was reduced by more than one-fifth.” (source) On the same day, the BBC reported Beijing drivers as having all but ignored the call for No Car Day, where the event was voluntary and not enforced as in Kunming. Having reported on April’s No Car Day, it was already the sixth monthly No Car Day. Most people that China’s Green Beat spoke with said that they had gotten used to the policy by now and adjusted their patterns by either taking public transport, not planning major shopping or events on those days, or borrowing their friends’ even-numbered plate car for the even-numbered month.
This new video, produced by Green Sisters Leigh Billings and Tina Hou in Shanghai, was a result of the video training meeting held in Beijing in April.
In China, packaging for consumer products is often excessive and gorgeous. Packaging creates a huge amount of waste, how can we get rid of this problem? First we must consider why do Chinese manufacturers always put layer after layer of packaging on their products. They must think the consumers are requesting all this packaging. But do they? If they do, why? In this short film, the Green Sisters investigate these questions using statistics, policy, interviews with customers and salespeoples, as well as a look at how the culture of gift-giving in China plays into the question.
Beijing International Theatre & Entertainment (BITE) in conjunction with China’s Green Beat will be performing the “Lean, Mean and Green” comedy to entertain audiences as well as to raise awareness about the environmental and business solutions. The hilarious show uses a Reality TV show format to discuss about the environment, poking fun at both environmentalists and industrialists. “Environmental pollution is everyone’s problem, and it’s particularly obvious here in Beijing. Modern media is displaying the debate with such doom and gloom which doesn’t solve anything. We are showcasing it using laughter and showing positive solutions. This will have an impact!” said Rene Ng, Director of “Lean, Mean and Green.” The play will be filmed and showcased online at a later date.
The “Lean, Mean and Green” shows will be performed on June 13, 14, 20, 21 at 7:30pm at Obiwan Bar, located at Xihai Xiyan No.4 Xicheng District. A map of the location can be found here: Lean Mean and Green location map
Tickets are RMB100 each. Discounted tickets are offered to Ex-pat students for RMB50 each and Chinese students for RMB30 each.
It has been awhile since we have updated our viewers with news or given you new content, but rest assured the Green Brothers have been hard at work the past few months. Our biggest news is that we are now in cooperation with China Dialogue, a premier bilingual site on the environment that focuses on Chinese and global issues. Through our cooperation agreement, we set up a conference in Beijing and selected 30 Chinese students (10 from Beijing, 20 from other cities ranging from Urumqi to Haikou, from Kunming to Harbin) to attend and receive training in how to make a China’s Green Beat video, a video that teaches the viewer about environmental solutions and engages them to take action. Over the next two months, new content will be released on China’s Green Beat and China Dialogue websites that was produced as a result of this conference and the efforts of students all across China. Here is a preview of what’s ahead.
China’s appetite for energy is growing just as quickly as its economy. Currently, 70% of primary energy in China comes from coal, creating large amounts of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Over the next ten years, China will see a growing portion of their energy come from renewable sources, due to an ambitious national policy. In this episode, China’s Green Beat visits a Beijing wind farm and investigates what role the United Nations’ clean development mechanism has played in the development of wind energy in China, which has been growing at 30% per year.
The newest episode of China’s Green Beat is about public transportation in Beijing. Whereas the first three episodes were filmed and produced in a documentary style, episode 4 is filmed in a comedy and drama style, following one main character Sun Zhe as he has various experiences around Beijing on the subway, the bus, and his bike.
中国绿色脉搏的最新一集是关于北京的公共交通。鉴于前三集的拍摄与制作都是以纪录片形式的，第四集我们以喜剧形式拍摄，并以孙哲为主角。孙哲有很多在北京城里乘坐地铁，公交以及骑自行车的经验。
People who have been to Beijing know that both the air and the traffic can get quite bad. The two are closely linked, as vehicles are the cause of 40% of Beijing’s air pollution, according the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau. Currently, only 1/3 of trips in Beijing are on public transport, while 1/3 are in private vehicles. The buses are crowded and uncomfortable while the subways are limited in the number of places you can get to; public transportation certainly doesn’t appeal to those who own a car. There are already 3 millions cars on the road, with at least 1000 new ones hitting the streets every day.Much of the problem can be attributed to Beijing’s sprawling urban design. It simply takes a very long time to get between two points. The area of Beijing (within the fifth ring road) is comparable to New York’s five boroughs. The future of Beijing’s public transportation system does look bright though. The system already carries 15 million commuters every day, and that number is expected to rise to 28 million by 2012. This would raise the proportion of those riding public transport from 1/3 to 1/2.The subway system currently consists of five lines with a combined length of 142 kilometers. By 2008, there will be nine lines totaling 200 kilometers and by 2020, 19 lines totaling 561.5 kilometers, set to be the longest in the world. When the new subway line 5 was introduced, the government cut the subway fare to only two yuan. Suddenly, the daily subway ridership was near 2.5 million, up 900,000 from the month before. Efforts are also being made to improve the city’s bus system; for instance, the government has introduced 4000 new buses that run on cleaner-burning natural gas.
