{"id":2467,"date":"2018-11-16T04:03:04","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T04:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/?p=2467"},"modified":"2018-11-16T04:03:04","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T04:03:04","slug":"ikea-has-a-plan-to-fix-the-pollution-crisis-in-indias-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/2018\/11\/16\/ikea-has-a-plan-to-fix-the-pollution-crisis-in-indias-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Ikea has a plan to fix the pollution crisis in India’s cities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New Delhi (CNN Business)<\/cite>Ikea has come up with a plan to help some of the world’s most polluted cities breathe easier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The global furniture giant will start making products out of agricultural waste in India, meaning farmers no longer have to burn it.<\/div>\n
The initiative, called “Better Air Now,”\u00a0<\/strong>will provide Indian farmers with a use for unwanted rice straw, which is often burned. Smoke from the fires\u00a0<\/strong>is one of the major contributors to northern India’s pollution crisis.<\/div>\n
Ikea, which\u00a0opened its first stores in India<\/a>\u00a0earlier this year, plans to buy the straw and turn it into a renewable source for Ikea products. The company’s ambition is “to create a model for how to reduce air pollution that could be replicated in other mega cities,” it said in a statement on Thursday.<\/div>\n
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The Swedish company said its first product prototypes based on rice straw will be ready by the end of 2018.\u00a0<\/strong>It hopes to start selling them in India by 2020 before offering them in other markets.<\/div>\n
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The program will kick off in the areas around India’s capital New Delhi \u2014 one of the world’s most polluted cities \u2014 before being extended to other parts of the country and eventually to Ikea’s global markets.<\/div>\n
Ikea is working with Indian state and local governments, NGOs and companies to help take the initiative forward.<\/p>\n
Every year, farmers set fire to millions of tons of crop residue to clear fields for the next season, releasing huge amounts of harmful air particles into the environment.<\/div>\n
As much as 33% of New Delhi’s overall pollution earlier this month came from crop burning in surrounding states, according to a report by India’s\u00a0<\/strong>System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research.<\/div>\n
Pollution in India is believed to be responsible for\u00a0<\/strong>as many as one million deaths<\/a>\u00a0a year.<\/div>\n
Data from the World Health Organization released in May gave India the unenviable distinction of having nine of the world’s 10 most polluted cities.<\/div>\n
New Delhi’s air is so polluted that residents could live as much as nine years longer if the city met WHO standards, the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago estimated in a study last year.<\/div>\n
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Ikea has taken other steps to increase sustainability in recent months, including a\u00a0global ban on single-use plastic<\/a>\u00a0at its stores earlier this year.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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New Delhi (CNN Business)Ikea has come up with a plan to help some of the world’s most polluted cities breathe easier. The global furniture giant will start making products out of agricultural waste in India, meaning farmers no longer have to burn it. The initiative, called “Better Air Now,”\u00a0will provide Indian farmers with a use for unwanted rice straw, which… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-2467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post","tag-cnn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2468,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions\/2468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}