Chen Xiuzheng spent 15 yuan ($2.40) to have her two pots of nianju (New Year's potted oranges) and a big peach blossom branch carried out of her home on Wednesday morning.

"I buy the flowers before Spring Festival every year and have them dumped after the festival," said the 55-year-old housewife, who lives in a fifth-floor apartment in a housing estate in Guangzhou's Haizhu district.

"They are too heavy for me to carry from my home to the estate's waste collection center when my children have left home for work," she added.

Chen is just one of thousands of residents in the Guangdong provincial capital who are throwing out flowers that have faded after the beginning of Spring Festival on Feb 10.

According to an environmental sanitation employee in the city's Nonglinxia Road, workers have had to rack up overtime in recent days to handle the growing number of festive flowers that are being tossed by local government agencies, companies and residents after the Lunar New Year.

"Usually, the dumping of flowers and potted plants will not come to an end before the Lantern Festival, which is the 15th day of the first month of lunar Chinese calendar," the environmental sanitation worker said.

The city's Lunar New Year celebrations usually come to an end after the Lantern Festival, which fell on Sunday, he said.

"The several weeks after the festival are always the busiest period for environmental sanitation workers in this southern metropolis," he added.

The Guangzhou administrative committee in charge of the flower street fair said that around 92.7 million yuan worth of flowers changed hands during the three-day Spring Festival flower fair, which attracted more than 8.78 million buyers and visitors.

It is estimated that more than 10,000 metric tons of potted plants, flowers, tree branches and other festive products are abandoned annually by city residents.