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The City Of Sydney Are Thinking About Swapping Sydney’s NYE Fireworks For A Drone-Operated Light Show

A proposal to scrap the fireworks in favour of a more environmentally-friendly NYE celebrations is being heard by the City Of Sydney today.

According to reports by the Sydney Morning Herald, the City Of Sydney may start looking into replacing the city’s annual New Year's fireworks with a drone-operated light show instead.

The meeting between City of Sydney’s council staff, which takes place today, will apparently hear a motion from Liberal councillor Craig Chung that'll ask the council to explore the feasibility of replacing the NYE fireworks with drone lights. Parties will vote on whether they’d like the council to look at this seriously. If so, this could eventually result in scrapping the fireworks altogether, in favour of more cost-effective and environmentally-friendly New Year's celebrations. 

The fireworks have been a point of contention for Sydneysiders for a few years now. The fireworks contribute to air pollution and, now that the physical impact of climate change is being felt by so many, the environmental concerns around them are becoming harder to sideline. The debate around the fireworks became especially intense last year, when the City of Sydney decided to go ahead with the firework display despite the bushfires that raged across the country.

A drone light show costs far less (we're talking millions of dollars less) than the current firework display does too, so there’s good economic incentive for making the switch. The challenge would be in making the drone light show as captivating as the fireworks – but other events like the Super Bowl, which used drone lights for Lady Gaga’s hella performance a few years back, and the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, provide a good blueprint for how to do this.

"It has to be something comparably spectacular," Councillor Chung said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. "People were very concerned at the fireworks going ahead while the bushfires were raging around Australia, so this at least will go part way to addressing the concern if we are facing crises like that."

We'll keep you posted on where the City of Sydney lands with this one and what it means for your annual countdown. 

Main Image Credit: Under licence from Getty

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