In Chinese culture, they celebrate The 7th Lunar Month or better known as The Hungry Ghost Festival on the 15th night of the seventh month of the Chinese Calendar. During this month of the year, all the ghosts and spirits including those of deceased ancestors would come out from the lower realm based on the belief of Chinese culture.
During this celebration, they have to prepare ritualistic food offerings, burning incense, and burning joss paper that is a paper-mâché form of material items such as clothes, gold, and other fine goods for the visiting spirits of the ancestors. Their particular celebration makes many people wonder where do all the food offerings go after that.
Usually, most of the offerings would be thrown away by the cleaners that are working the next morning. This situation has inspired a group of people to do a different approach on what to do with the foods used for the offerings. They have decided to wander around the neighborhoods late at night and really searching for the fruits that have been left behind by all the people who celebrated the 7th Lunar Month Offerings.
One of the freegans who lives in Singapore that is Daniel Tay aged 41 years old, has recently organized and then led the particular small organization on fruit hunt in the area of Bishan and also Ang Mo Kio. Being a freegan, Daniel Tay said that he definitely rejects consumerism and always finds a way to help the environment by cutting down the amount of waste. The only action that he can take advantage of from the 7th Lunar Month Offerings would be to collect all the edible food or items that still can be used but they have been discarded.
Daniel Tay mentioned on his Facebook page, his friends and he succeed to collect the amount of more than 200 fruits over the past two nights and most of them are oranges. Other than that, they also collected apples, pineapples, rambutans, langsat, and also bananas.
“As a true freegan, we collect whatever is unwanted by others. We say thank you, and proceed to use it for our own needs and wants,” Daniel Tay explained. Many participants that joined the activity said they felt really satisfied with the activity even though they are a bit tired going around the neighborhood collecting all the fruits.
The collection of fruits that they have gained from the activity, they split them up so that all of them can share them with their respective families, friends, and also neighbors around their household.
Sources: Facebook Daniel Tay.