Hong Kong’s latest COVID-19 outbreak has cost about 6,000 lives this year and the territory is now running out of coffins.
Authorities have scrambled to order more, with the government saying that 1,200 coffins had reached the territory last week, with more to come.
Space constraints make cremation a common burial practice in the densely populated territory, and the coffins typically are wood or wood substitutes.
Photo: AP
To answer the shortage of them due to the COVID-19 toll, some companies are offering alternatives such as an environmentally friendly cardboard coffin.
LifeArt Asia has cardboard coffins made of recycled wood fiber that can be customized with designs on the exterior.
In its factory in Aberdeen, a southern district of Hong Kong, up to 50 coffins can be produced a day.
LifeArt Asia chief executive officer Wilson Tong said that there is still some resistance to using caskets made of cardboard.
People feel that “it’s a little bit shameful to use so-called paper caskets,” Tong said. “They feel that this is not very respectful to their loved ones.”
However, the company has designs that can reflect religion or hobbies, and the coffin can even have a personalized color, he said.
“So it gives more than enough sufficient choices to the people, and so that they can customize the funeral and offer a more pleasant farewell without the fear of death,” he said.
The company says that its cardboard coffins, when burned during the cremation, emit 87 percent less greenhouse gas compared with those made of wood or wood substitutes.
Each LifeArt coffin weights about 10.5kg and can carry a body that weights up to 200kg.
Hong Kong has reported about 200 COVID-19 deaths daily on average over the past week. The surge has put a strain on mortuaries and refrigerated containers are being used to temporarily store bodies.
Amid the rising toll, non-profit Forget Thee Not, which advises people on their choices for last rites, bought 300 cardboard coffins and caskets to either send to hospitals or give to families who need them.
“We have been promoting environmentally friendly and personalized funerals,” said Albert Ko (高永賢), a board director at Forget Me Not. “Now we see that Hong Kong needs more coffins. There are not enough coffins for the bodies in our hospitals.”
Some of the elderly people who discussed their last rites with the organization have been open-minded and welcoming to the idea of environmentally friendly coffins,” he said.
“We hope to take this opportunity to contribute as well as promote eco-coffins,” he said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru, a US$1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent. With China’s demand for agricultural goods and metals from Latin America growing, Xi will participate in the APEC summit in Lima then head to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week, where he will also make a state visit to Brazil. Xi and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte participated on Thursday by video link in the opening
‘CHINA HAWKS’: Rubio and Michael Waltz, who is said to be next national security adviser, view Beijing as a threat and challenge to US economic and military might US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday announced new members of his incoming administration and was expected to pick US Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state. Rubio and US Representative Michael Waltz, who has been lined up for the powerful US national security adviser role, have notably hawkish views on China, which they see as a threat and challenge to US economic and military might. The two appointees, both from Florida, would be key architects of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, with the incoming president having promised to end the wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, and avoid any more
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
RSS