An environmental group on Friday urged people to go easy on the red packets this Lunar New Year, saying more than 320 million are handed out annually – the equivalent of 16,300 trees.

Greeners Action, which has been recycling lai see packets for 14 years, expects to collect five million of them this year.

Michelle Chung, the group's assistant project manager, said a lot of red packets end up in the landfill because of the widespread belief that they can only be used once.

"Red packets are actually paper and they are not just for one-time use. We send to the workers, they will sort it out and screen out red packets that are not suitable. We collect them and keep them for the whole year, so the red packets can be used a few times more, instead of being thrown away to the landfill," she said.

Chung added that while distributing red packets is still a deep-rooted tradition, she has noticed a change in people's habits over the past decade.

"Some big companies started issuing electronic red packets to their employees, so that is quite a new stage," she said.

"People consciously know that after the Lunar New Year, the red packets need to be recycled... They have to keep [the red packets] for next year. Compared to ten years ago when we started the programme, it's already changing." she said.

The group has set up 51 distribution points across the city to hand out red packets collected from last year, including at shopping centres, housing estates and social welfare organisations.