BEIJING - In eight Chinese cities, a series of activities with the theme "I save, I green" took place, attracting the interest of citizens and helping them to learn more about how to live an environmentally friendly life.

The most popular part was a series of questions held in Shanghai based on people's daily behavior, with questions about how they traveled, the fabrics they wore, the light they used and so forth to calculate how ecologically-minded they were.

In Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan province, participants used discarded Philips lamps, posters and paper packaging to design suits and evening gowns. The activities, hosted by Philips Lighting China over the last two months, were aimed at promoting energy-saving concepts as well as the company's own energy-saving lamps.

In each city, the activity was sited in busy shopping streets or public squares so that people of all ages could take part.

Philips has been hosting this activity for five years. During the past two years, the inventor of the world's first energy-saving lamp and leading lighting company has provided 19.9 million energy-saving lamps to Chinese people in 14 provinces. It has been carried out in cooperation with the Chinese government, which plans to provide more than 150 million energy-saving lamps to the public this year through subsidies.

In Ansai, an under-developed county in Shaanxi province, where many people still live in caves, Philips and the government gave out hundreds of thousands of energy-saving lamps to thousands of families. The move is expected to save 700,000 kWh a day. A further 600,000 energy-saving lamps were distributed in the Tibet autonomous region.

During the past year, Philips has donated 13 million energy-saving lamps to the Chinese community, amounting to nearly the 10 percent of the "Green Lighting Project".

This project, which aims to promote the use of energy-saving lamps throughout the country, was launched in 1996. In 2008 the central government decided to popularize energy-saving lamps through subsidies in a policy included in the 11th Five-Year Plan, which outlined the nation's premier economic intentions between 2006 and 2010. So far, more than 210 million traditional lamps have been replaced with energy-saving lamps. By the end of this year, the number will be 360 million.

The figure is equivalent to every family having at least one energy-saving lamp. This will save almost one third of the Three Gorges Dam's yearly capacity. According to China Illuminating Engineering Society, 13 percent of the country's electricity is used for lighting. The energy-saving lamps can save 80 percent of electrical output compared with traditional lamps and also last six times longer.

In China's first-tier cities, people can pay 1 yuan, which is the price of a traditional lamp, to buy an energy-saving lamp normally costing 10 yuan through a subsidy met 50 percent by the central government and 40 percent by the local government.

China Daily

(China Daily 09/20/2010 page20)