GOVERNMENT EFFORTS

In Shanghai, half of the city's 10,000 mu (666.66 hectares) of commercial graveyard space is already in use. The remaining space is expected to be filled in the next 20 years as 110,000 people die in the city each year, according to Wang Hongjie, chairman of the Funeral Industry Association of Shanghai.

With land resources running scarce, green burials have been promoted by officials across the country as a way to conserve space.

The Department of Civil Affairs of southwest China's Sichuan Province has offered more than 400 free green burial pits to the public and it has used local media to promote green burial in the area.

The government of Yiwu City in east China's Zhejiang Province adopted a measure in March making those who scatter the ashes of their relatives eligible to collect 6,000 yuan (917.046 U.S. dollars), and those choosing to bury ashes under trees, flowers or lawns will be given 3,000 yuan.

In the city of Qingdao in east China's Shandong Province, the local government has been organizing an annual free collective sea burial held every April since the 1990s.

Although similar measures have been taken by local governments across the country, policy makers have not achieved the results they had hoped for.