· A firecracker cannot be green. The most the science supports is “reduced emission”, and the system behind the label cannot reliably check even that.
· On an average, each cubic metre of Delhi’s air had 488 micrograms of fine PM2.5 dust, about eight times India’s national daily limit of 60 micrograms.
· Firecrackers should be tested at the point of sale and the certificates should be harder to forge than a printed code.
In its opening pages, the Supreme Court’s order on this year’s Diwali crackers explains the harm they do. Cracker dust can hang in the air for days, the judges wrote, and its particles are small enough to slip into the bloodstream. Every party in the case agreed that crackers add enormously to pollution in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR). Further on, the same order lets people burst green crackers on November 7 and 8, from 6 to 7 am and 8 to 10 pm. A complete ban returns on November 9.
My quarrel is with the word on the box. A firecracker cannot be green. The most the science supports is “reduced emission”, and the system behind the label cannot reliably check even that.
A cracker is fuel packed with chemicals that feed it oxygen, so it burns fast and leaves smoke. Its colours come from metals, strontium for red and copper for blue, and those metals end up in the tiny particles people breathe afterwards. Barium gives fireworks their green and soluble barium compounds are poisonous. The Supreme Court banned barium salts in crackers in 2018, so a certified “green” cracker cannot use the chemical that makes fireworks green.
CSIR-NEERI, a government laboratory in Nagpur, certifies a cracker as green if it gives off at least 30 per cent less fine dust than an ordinary cracker of its type. A cracker can also pass with 20 per cent less dust and 10 per cent less harmful gas. That route lets it put out as much as four-fifths of the dust of the one it replaces.
No one would describe a factory chimney as clean simply because it’s emitting a fifth less smoke. The Supreme Court was very much aware of this in September 2023, when it refused to allow manufacturers to bring back barium nitrate in a formula which reduced dust by as much as 30 per cent. The two judges―A. S. Bopanna and M. M. Sundresh―felt that a 30 per cent reduction wasn’t sufficient to resolve the matter. Government scientists and regulators had to examine, with experts, whether the remaining dust would still be harmful to those already breathing polluted air. Justice Sundresh is now on the bench that approved the crackers this year, but the order makes no mention of any resolution.
The research is thin, and some of it runs counter to the label. Scientists from the Delhi Technological University and IIT Roorkee measured the air on a Delhi campus during Diwali 2019, the year green crackers first went on sale. By count, 72 per cent of the particles they measured cent were ultrafine, smaller than 100 nanometres. Particles that small travel deep into the lungs. Earlier studies of ordinary fireworks had found a lower share. The Delhi study covered one campus on one night.
Last Diwali’s trial did not go well. In October 2025, the court allowed green crackers in Delhi as a test, and police recorded over 100 cases of people bursting crackers outside the allowed hours. Climate Trends, a research group, looked at government records for 24 hours after Diwali. On an average, each cubic metre of Delhi’s air had 488 micrograms of fine PM2.5 dust, about eight times India’s national daily limit of 60 micrograms. This was more than three times the pre-festival level and the highest in five years. The group blamed mainly firecracker smoke, held close to the ground by calm winds and a lid of warm air.
No official study has worked out as to how much of that smoke came from certified crackers. The court wanted the states to measure what green crackers did to air and health, and its new order says they “utterly failed” to comply.
The hunt for fakes has not progressed at all. On November 3, the bench hearing the case noted in court that Delhi’s markets were selling every kind of cracker, licensed or unlicensed, with a QR code or without one. The code is meant to let buyers check a cracker’s certificate. ThePrint reported in October 2025 that the system had been all but abandoned because counterfeiters copied or obtained codes. Delhi-NCR, it found, had no laboratory to test crackers. The new order tightens the rules on codes, yet the court accepts that ordinary crackers have been sold under the green label.
There are reasonable arguments for allowing some crackers. Total bans were ignored, and the judges have said so. Shopkeepers who lost their licenses told the court that a ban on crackers simply benefits the illegal sellers who are going to use even worse crackers. The environment ministry has told the court that the new formulae, which have been tested at the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and in Sivakasi, reduce emissions by 45-50 per cent. These formulae still contain some barium nitrate and the ministry would like them to be approved. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air has found that 65 per cent of Delhi's winter PM2.5 in 2025 came from outside the city. I accept most of these arguments. It doesn't, however, make a cracker in any way green.
The solution begins with the label. These products should be called reduced-emission crackers and the actual reduction in emissions should be printed on the pack so that the consumer knows whether they’re buying a cracker that pollutes 30 per cent or 45 per cent less. The Central Consumer Protection Authority’s 2024 guidelines already prohibit companies from calling a product ‘green’ or ‘eco-friendly’ without proof or details. The crackers should be tested at the point of sale and the certificates should be harder to forge than a printed code. The court will be looking for an answer to its 2023 query after the festival, using the hospital admission figures, which the Delhi NCR governments are required to submit by December 14.
(The author is an ICSSR Fellow at the Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, where his research focuses on the environment, climate change, disasters, water, forests, and public policy and governance)
(Views expressed are personal)
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