Dirty air choking Delhi, Punjab farmers recycle crop waste — moving away from stubble burning

Several farmers in Punjab are now collecting their leftover crop stalks (stubble) and sending them to factories instead of burning them — a big step away from traditional stubble-burning.

They use balers to pack the stubble, which is then sent to plants that turn it into useful products such as biogas, bio-fertiliser, and cardboard.

This shift is important because burning stubble every winter adds heavily to the toxic air in Delhi, especially when combined with vehicle pollution and dust, and gets trapped due to low wind speeds.

However, experts say that while this new method has reduced burning to some extent, more awareness and incentives are needed for it to be adopted at a much larger scale.

Some farmers, like Dalbir Singh and Gurnaib Singh, are already on board: they’re stocking stubble rather than burning it, and even running factories to create cardboard, which also helps with local employment.

Meanwhile, Delhi’s air quality remains very poor. At one point, the Air Quality Index was around 400, which is classed as “severe”.

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