Why Pingxi's eco-friendly sky lanterns are hard to promote: How can local and outside innovation coexist?
Pingxi has become an international-level tourist landmark in Taiwan, China, thanks to its sky lantern culture. Sky lanterns bearing written wishes rise slowly into the sky with their flames, bringing visitors fond memories. However, the release of at least 30,000 sky lanterns every month also brings an environmental burden and hidden fire risks. The base of a traditional sky lantern, made from a bamboo frame and iron wire, burns and falls. Although the vast majority are collected and recycled for money, some sky lanterns still fall uncontrollably, causing fires or leading animals to ingest them or become injured.
"Culture Bank," formed by a group of students from National Chiao Tung University, developed an eco-friendly sky lantern that can burn away completely, reducing the environmental burden and fire risk. It was officially launched in October last (2019). However, the innovation seems hard to gain recognition from local businesses. So far, weekly sales are only about 7 to 8 eco-friendly sky lanterns. Calculated against Pingxi's monthly release of 30,000 sky lanterns, that is not even one-thousandth.
The businesses' resistance and passive attitude toward eco-friendly sky lanterns involve a complex love-hate relationship. What eco-friendly sky lanterns trigger is not only a conflict between environmental protection and business opportunity, but also a reflection of different local imaginations of the direction of development.
The competitive and cooperative relationship between eco-friendly sky lanterns and traditional sky lanterns
Shifen Station, a railway station made internationally famous by the film "Dust in the Wind," has the densest concentration of the sky lantern industry. In just over 200 meters, there are 30 traditional sky lantern businesses.
When reporters visited sky lantern shops and asked whether they offered eco-friendly sky lanterns, many shopkeepers stopped smiling and stressed that their own traditional sky lanterns were also very "eco-friendly," saying that "every sky lantern is recycled." When the topic of sky lanterns being "eco-friendly" came up, the businesses' defensive dissatisfaction was clearly felt. Although businesses believe that all traditional sky lanterns are recycled, frequent fires and mountain fires have indeed badly damaged the image of sky lanterns. In the past year, the fourth fire caused by sky lanterns has already occurred, and affected residents even had nowhere to turn for help.
Did you know: The base of a traditional sky lantern is handmade from a bamboo frame and iron wire, uses joss paper as fuel, and sells for 150 yuan each. After it rises, the fuel burns out and it falls, and the sky lantern base must be collected by dedicated workers. The eco-friendly sky lantern uses a patented design with a pulp base. After it rises to about 380 m, the base burns to ashes and no longer needs to be manually collected. It sells for about 450 yuan each.
Businesses refuse to pay into the "Sky Lantern Sustainable Development Fund," leaving fire victims unable to claim compensation
Last July (2019), a house in Pingxi caught fire. The homeowner, holding a fire incident certificate issued by the fire department stating that the fire was "caused by sky lanterns," filed a claim for 1.7 million yuan from the "Sky Lantern Sustainable Development Fund," a public fund specifically responsible for compensating for fires caused by sky lanterns.
The "Sky Lantern Sustainable Development Fund" is paid into by sky lantern businesses and is ordinarily managed by the township office on their behalf. Once a fire incident caused by sky lanterns has been reviewed and approved by a committee formed by business representatives, funds are allocated to pay compensation. However, because contributions are voluntary and have no mandatory force, fewer and fewer shops pay in. According to public information from the township office, by the end of November only a little more than 6,000 yuan remained, and it was no longer able to cover responsibility for any fire incident.
The victim in this incident had nowhere to seek compensation, and the matter remains unresolved to this day, bringing the public safety issue of sky lanterns to the surface again.
Chairman of the Sky Lantern Association: Outsiders harm the local area in the name of environmental protection
Hu Minshu, chairman of the Sky Lantern Folk Culture Development Association, is a well-known sky lantern expert and was one of the very few pioneers who first began holding sky lantern activities more than 30 years ago. Regarding fires caused by sky lanterns, he believes: "A sky lantern falls because the fuel (joss paper) has burned out. Can a fully burned sky lantern fly into a house and cause a house fire? So there is a problem with this fire determination. On top of that, profits have been continuously squeezed, so shops are unwilling to pay this money anymore, because by this standard there would be no end to the compensation!"
Hu Minshu, himself also a sky lantern business owner, voiced the knot in shopkeepers' hearts about being unwilling to pay into the public fund. "The flight range of sky lanterns is limited. For sky lanterns that fall into trees, dedicated people use telescoping poles to retrieve them. One sky lantern is recycled for 8 yuan. From children five or six years old to people in their eighties or nineties, everyone collects sky lanterns, and the recycling rate is over 95%." Hu Minshu defended the environmental harm of sky lanterns in a firm tone.
Regarding sales of eco-friendly sky lanterns, Hu Minshu said that many businesses have their own sky lantern manufacturing factories. If they additionally ordered patented sky lanterns from Culture Bank, it would be like crippling their own abilities, and the workers involved in making and recycling sky lanterns would face unemployment, which is also a problem. In addition, eco-friendly sky lanterns are priced at 350-400 yuan, far higher than traditional sky lanterns, and businesses also worry that a high-pricing strategy would deter consumers and affect Pingxi's tourism industry.
"Sky lanterns developed with crowdfunded money should help the local industry, not become something that harms the local industry!" In 2016, Culture Bank advocated the issue of the environmental harm of Pingxi sky lanterns, and through online dissemination and media reports it badly damaged the image of Pingxi sky lanterns, which still leaves Hu Minshu and local businesses feeling resentful. Hu said that outsiders criticize traditional sky lanterns as "not eco-friendly" and then launch their own patented products, which makes them feel even more that the local area is being harmed in the name of environmental protection.
Culture Bank: Eco-friendly sky lanterns already give profits to shops
Xu Jialin, business manager for promoting eco-friendly sky lanterns, said that when the molds for eco-friendly sky lanterns were developed through crowdfunding, the sponsors were already informed and willing to support such a commercial action. In addition, Culture Bank invested a great deal of manpower and time in research, development, and experimentation before obtaining the technology, and the intellectual property rights to this result should belong to Culture Bank.
Xu Jialin said that most of the profits from eco-friendly sky lanterns have already been given to the shops selling them. To reduce traditional businesses' controversy over the environmental issues surrounding "eco-friendly sky lanterns," Culture Bank also renamed the product externally as "sustainable sky lanterns," and promised that in the future it would give back to the local area and invest in environmental improvement. However, after more than two months of visits and communication, only two shops are currently willing to sell eco-friendly sky lanterns, and fewer than ten sustainable sky lanterns are sold each month.
Although the sales figures are poor, Xu Jialin believes that in the long term sustainable sky lanterns have considerable room for growth. Xu said that Culture Bank's vision is not limited to Taiwan, China, and that technological cooperation with Thailand or the United States is also possible.
Xu believes that apart from negative environmental reviews and risks, the traditional sky lantern industry is also quite fragile in its real-world situation. "Within the sky lantern market there is a problem of price-cutting competition. The price of one sky lantern has dropped from three or four hundred yuan to 150. Tourists come to Pingxi just to spend a cheap price to make a wish and release a sky lantern. Businesses just keep pushing volume, but the cultural experience is not deep enough. Externally there is an industry image problem: once international tourists stop coming, a crisis will arise."
To Xu Jialin, the sky lantern market is full of hidden dangers. Most businesses have not realized the industry's predicament or moved toward shallow-rooted development, and without local cultural discourse or more refined operations, they could lose the market at any time to tourists drawn by Vietnam, Thailand, and other places that also promote sky lantern tourism.
Helping "sustainable sky lanterns": A veteran craftsman wants to give sky lanterns greater cultural depth
Lin Guohe, a retired teacher, is a sky lantern cultural worker on Shifen Street and the earliest traditional craftsman to participate in Culture Bank's research and development plan. Lin Guohe believes that to deepen the sky lantern industry, the most important thing is to spread understanding and feeling for the culture.
"Sky lanterns were brought from Tangshan to Taiwan, China with land reclamation and came to Pingxi. In the past, transportation in the mountainous area was inconvenient, and releasing sky lanterns was used to signal safety. Later it evolved into ritual and belief. Sky lanterns represent 'adding a child,' and the five colors represent health, wisdom, love, peace, and wealth." When selling sky lanterns to customers, he places special emphasis on explaining the origins of sky lanterns.
He explained, "Culture needs to be refined and made more exquisite to continue maintaining profits and sustain itself over the long run. But the sky lantern industry today has gone astray. Shops neglect cultural exchange in order to push volume. To push volume, they hire more employees, and then this forms a vicious cycle of forced price-cutting competition."
He agrees with the concept of "sustainable sky lanterns." Although the purchase cost is high, the price is also high. The profit from selling one sustainable sky lantern is two to three times that of a traditional sky lantern, creating the same profit with a smaller quantity. He believes that only this kind of pricing strategy can straighten out the vicious cycle in the original sky lantern market.
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