Health Secretary Enrique Ona
To greet the New Year, laugh at the top of your lungs, jiggle your piggy banks or switch on the radio and break into the latest dance craze.
The EcoWaste Coalition has made a list of various ways Filipino households across the country can welcome the New Year this weekend without losing a limb from the indiscriminate use of firecrackers.
“We can avoid headline-grabbing carnage and garbage following the revelry by simply shunning pyrotechnics,” said Aileen Lucero, the group’s “Iwas PapuToxic” campaigner.
Kid-safe
To launch its campaign for safe New Year festivities, the group on Wednesday led a band of children in the streets of Malate, Manila, to promote “Ligtas Salubong 2012,” which aims to promote a “kid-safe” celebration of the New Year.
The members of the Children’s Ministry of Our Lady of Remedies Parish in Malate amused commuters and residents with a number of alternatives to hazardous firecrackers.
The annual collaboration between the Care for the Earth Ministry and the EcoWaste Coalition since 2008 also showcased the use of creative noisemakers to safely welcome the New Year, complementing efforts of the Department of Health (DOH) to reduce firecracker-related injuries.
“New Year revelers should take their cue from these smart kids and refrain from buying and letting off firecrackers that could endanger the health and life of both users and non-users,” said John Leydon, the parish priest.
Innovative ways
“With a little creativity, we can have a joyful celebration with our families and neighbors without causing toxic fumes and wastes and loud cries from children wounded in firecracker explosions,” Leydon said.
Instead of lighting firecrackers, the EcoWaste Coalition suggested other inexpensive but innovative ways to welcome 2012 with a bang:
Let your alarm clock ring or play ring tones on your mobile phones at exactly midnight.
1. Play your favorite music or musical instruments or just turn on the radio.
2. Jiggle “piggy banks” or “shakers” made from paper box or plastic bottles with seeds, pebbles or coins.
3. Clap your hands and stamp your feet.
4. Laugh at the top of your lungs.
5. Do the latest dance craze, twist and shout “Happy New Year!”
6. Blow Filipino-style trumpets or “torotot.”
7. Strike washbasins (“palanggana”) with a ladle or stick.
8. Blow a whistle.
9. Play homemade drums made of big water bottles, biscuit cans or buckets.
The DOH has repeatedly reminded Filipinos to refrain from using firecrackers to celebrate the New Year.
Communal fireworks
Health Secretary Enrique Ona has also advised households across the country to mount communal fireworks display in their villages or town plazas to ensure that fireworks are handled only by experts.
Fireworks and firecracker-related injuries reported to the DOH during the holidays last year stood at 1,022, 1.4 percent lower than the previous year’s total.
At least 34 percent of all firecracker-related injuries in 2010 involved children aged between 1 and 10. The victims sustained injuries from blasting without amputation (79 percent), eye injuries (15 percent), and blast injuries with amputation (6 percent).
The small, cheap and colorful “piccolo” and “kwitis” were the top sources of firecracker-related injuries.