Green Crackers With 30% Less Pollution Are In Market. Is It The Only Way To Celebrate Diwali?
Green&rsquo firecrackers with 30 per cent less emissions are now available in the markets. Markets in the national capital have also put up boards reading &ldquoWe don't sell banned firecracker&rdquo. In 2018 the Supreme Court had banned manufacturing of polluting crackers.
¡®Green¡¯ firecrackers with 30 per cent less emissions are now available in the markets. The idea is to let people celebrate with firecrackers without compromising on the air quality.
Markets in the national capital have also put up boards reading ¡°We don¡¯t sell banned firecrackers.¡±
The green crackers were displayed by the minister and scientists of Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) who were involved in their making.
Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said the new and improved crackers have been introduced to deal with the menace of pollution.
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"I am happy to announce that we have green crackers with reduced emission by minimum 30 per cent. These are environmental friendly. We had appealed to our scientists to come up with an alternative to the polluting fire crackers so that people's sentiments are taken care of without harming the environment," said Vardhan.
The crackers are available at lower cost due to the change in composition.
"The green crackers will be available at a cheaper price. It will not be more than the existing ones. The composition of the chemicals has changed which has reduced their cost," said Sadhana Rayalu, chief scientist and head of environmental materials divison, CSIR-NEERI.
In 2018, the Supreme Court had banned manufacturing of polluting firecrackers and ruled that only green crackers with reduced emission will be allowed to be sold in the country in order to control the pollution level. The decision came right before Diwali when stubble burning in the regions on Haryana and Punjab had drastically reduced the air quality in the national capital and surrounding regions.
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However, most sellers were left clueless about green firecrackers.
Farmers setting ablaze crop residue and the bursting of firecrackers during the festival of Diwali can cost the economy up to $190 billion (Rs 13 lakh crore), or 1.7 per cent of India¡¯s GDP, over the next five years, says a study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
The loss is in terms of human cost. The study says that residents of India¡¯s capital, New Delhi, and the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana together lose 19.2 million healthy man years due to stubble burning and firecrackers.
