Why in News?

• In a bid to resolve the crisis of air pollution, the Government has launched green firecrackers

Background:

• The Supreme Court in October 2018 banned the sale, use and manufacture of crackers that weren’t ‘green’ to reduce the pollution levels as firecrackers played a major role in exacerbating it
• This meant that these crackers couldn’t be loud beyond a certain limit, had to be approved by the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO) and had to be free of mercury, arsenic and barium.The court also restricted the time that crackers could be burst on Deepavali and police officials were tasked with enforcement.
• However, compliant crackers weren’t available in the market.
• Hence this led to development of green Crackers which could reduce the impact of pollution.

Green Crackers:

• It has been developed by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
• Components in firecrackers are replaced with others that are “less dangerous” and “less harmful” to the atmosphere
• The commonly used pollution-causing chemicals – aluminium, barium, potassium nitrate and carbon – have either been removed or sharply reduced in the green crackers
• They include environment-friendly fireworks such as sound emitting crackers, flowerpots, pencils, chakkar and sparklers.

Significance:

• It would reduce particulate matter pollution by 30%.
• On explosion, they reduce the dust and smoke typically associated with crackers by 30% and also decrease sulphur oxide and nitrous oxide emissions by 20%.
• These crackers cost the same as the older [banned ones] and are significantly greener
• A green logo as well as a Quick Response (QR) coding system has been developed for differentiation of green crackers from conventional crackers.
• QR codes is a novel feature incorporated on the fire crackers to avoid manufacture and sale of counterfeit products.
• This will also help the consumers to track the cracker using smart phones and other devices.
• This will also protect the livelihoods of millions of people engaged in manufacture and sale of fireworks across the country.
• Cracker manufactures say they aren’t sure if they will be able to supply and manufacture in sufficient quantities in 2019.
• It is too short a time before Deepavali (on the 27th and 28th) to manufacture and release them in the market.