Traditional public slow to accept pricey eco-coffins

Updated: 2008-09-18 07:41

By Peggy Chan(HK Edition)

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The government and green groups have been encouraging the use of coffins made with environmentally friendly materials, but makers say community education is needed for the public to accept the change.

Eco-coffins were introduced in Hong Kong about two years ago, but the importers have been discouraged by sales.

Fortune Corporation is one of three local eco-coffin importers. Owner John Lam imported from the mainland about 100 eco-coffins made of corrugated cardboard earlier this year.

But despite there being around 3,000 deaths per month in Hong Kong, Lam said he has been able to sell just 12 eco-coffins each month. He still has more than half of his original stock.

The main reasons for the unpopularity among customers is their price and the traditional Chinese concepts on funerals, the funeral supplier and a green group said.

Society as a whole, they said, is rather apathetic about environmentally friendly caskets.

It is Chinese tradition for funerals to be solemn and for coffins to honor the deceased.

"Some people think cardboard caskets are inferior to wooden ones, and are disgraceful to the dead," said Simon Chau, chairman of the Green Living Education Foundation.

He added that eco-coffins actually look like the traditional ones, but the former has more advantages, such as minimizing pollution and cremation time.

It takes just 45 minutes to burn the whole coffin, compared with at least two hours for a wooden coffin, meaning the wait for cremations would be shorter if everybody bought eco-coffins.

A major disadvantage over wooden coffins is that eco-coffins cannot be used for ground burials.

However, due to the low demand at the moment, the price of an eco-coffins ranges from HK$4,000 to HK$20,000, comparable to that of a wooden coffin.

As for the supplier, Lam can only make a maximum 5 percent profit from selling eco-coffins, compared with a 30 percent profit from wooden ones.

"This is another factor why the market rejects eco-coffins," Lam said, adding that the price will go down when people start buying them.

Chau said the mainland has forbidden the use of wooden coffins for years, so the high demand for cardboard ones has pushed down their price to as low as HK$300.

Noticing the cold reception from the funeral-services market for the eco-coffins, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department recently added a new licensing condition requiring the undertakers of burials to provide eco-coffins as an option for customers to buy.

Yet the industry found the profit of selling eco-coffins too little, so they still stick to wooden coffins.

Despite the social indifference toward green funerals, Lam and the green group believe the use of eco-coffins will eventually gain popularity in the city.

Lam said he expects eco-coffins to gain a market share of 30 percent in three to five years.

Community education is needed for the society to break through the old customs and accept the green concept, Chau said.

(HK Edition 09/18/2008 page1)