Smog: China’s Officials Order Restaurant To Stop Charging Customers To Breathe Clean Air

A Chinese restaurant that was charging customers to breathe clean air amid intense smog in the Asian country, has been ordered to put an end to the unwholesome business practice.

The restaurant, located in Zhangjiagang, was discovered to have included an “air cleaning fee” of about $0.15 to each customer’s bill to defray the cost of the eatery’s new air filtration system, installed amid smog warnings in the region.

The authorities had to wade in after customers of the restaurant, who noticed the bizarre charge, complained to the city’s Consumer Pricing Bureau.

The state-run Xinhua news agency quoted an official as saying that the filtered air could not be sold as a commodity because diners were not given the option of whether or not to breathe inside the facility.

China, home to the world’s largest number of human inhabitants – about 1,367,485,388 – last week, had most of its northern parts cloaked in a thick apocalyptic smog, which many scientists likened to a nuclear winter.

Although pollution levels in Beijing, the Chinese capital, have now subsided, President Xi Jinping cited the smog as the biggest challenge facing the capital.