As Chinese New Year is arriving soon, my family has once again started planning on following the traditional Chinese culture to worship our ancestors, which is to “burnt the joss paper-money”. However, I have always acknowledged the detrimental damage of this ritual to the air and causing even more severe air pollution problems.  So, this year I decided to step up for this problem but also keeping a balance to respect the Chinese culture we preserved. To do that, I propose the idea to buy a lesser amount of paper money, which still preserves the idea and symbolic representation to worship our ancestors but really decreases the carbon dioxide and other toxins produced through this ritual. My parents have acknowledged my effort in saving the planet environmentally and agreed to do it this year.

I believe if more people are willing to do this, we will be able to really take a step forward in saving the world that was once a utopia.  Making this choice in balancing our traditions and to the world show our action in responsible for our action, which fulfills and complete not just the traditional forms of life, but also life with ethics involved.