A look at the Beijing businesses turning the city’s heavy pollution to their advantage: from from bars offering air purifiers and cheap beer to companies selling ‘pollution fighting’ juices
Saturday night at The Distillery, a small bar tucked away in a warren of narrow lanes in Beijing’s city centre. The place is almost empty – a few people sit at the bar sipping cocktails and moaning about pollution. “It’s a bad smog day so people aren’t coming out,” says Bill Isler, the American bar owner, buffing glasses through boredom. Conversations in the bar revolve around the smog and the near-constant cloud it causes across the Chinese capital.
Stepping out of the bar, the smoky tang of polluted air instantly hits the back of the throat while visually, the haze creates an apocalyptic vibe. China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection’s (MEP) air quality index (AQI), the official measure of harmful pollutants in their air, has averaged over 400 micrograms per cubic metre for most of the day. China has weaker severity classifications for air pollution, but according to the World Health Organisation a measurement over 300 indicates a “severely polluted”atmosphere in which the public is advised to not go outside. The WHO puts the safe level at 25.
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