The Shanghai 2010 World Expo organizer on October 13, 2009 issued green commuting guidelines in conjunction with the city's environment authority and the Environmental Defense Fund, a non-profit organization.
Scene of the ceremony [en.expo2010.cn]
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The guidelines encourage people in Shanghai to take public transport or walk to the Expo site to reduce carbon emissions.
Chinese people should take trains and coaches rather than planes, the guidelines said. They also suggested foreigner visitors buy carbon credits to compensate for their plane trips' emissions.
Visitors can calculate their individual carbon emissions through the organization?s online calculator. An updated version of the one used for the Beijing Olympics is expected early next year.
The Expo organizer also invited people to design icons for the city's public transport cards to remind people to travel in an environmentally friendly manner: walking, riding bicycles or taking public transport.
The organizer will begin to take entries from the end of the year. The best designs will be printed on the millions of transport cards issued as well as on billboards at Metro stations. The designs should highlight the ideas of "low carbon emission" and "environmental protection," said Zhang Jiangyu, program manager of the fund, the operator of the campaign.
Since many people use transport cards, it could be a good way to change people's behavior, Zhang said. The fund will also invite some artists to take part in the design competition.
The fund will also open a Website for Expo visitors for people to buy carbon credits, which will be spent on planting trees in China. A team of traffic reporters from radio stations in all of the 16 Yangtze Delta cities October 13 began to drive across cities to promote the green guidelines.
The team will buy carbon credits to compensate for their emission during their 18-day journey.