City envy: we want Beijing's smog filtering tower

Zero visibility is always a possibility in Beijing on a heavily polluted day. And that’s why locals have always dreamt of a machine that can help purify the city’s hazardous air. Recently, Dutch innovator and designer, Daan Roosegaarde, has come up with the world’s largest air purifier. Called the Smog Free Tower, the seven-meter-tall tower is basically a gigantic vacuum cleaner that filters dirty air and returns it back to the atmosphere free of smog and dust. Even better, it compresses the carbon particles in the dust into jewelry that will be sold to fund the project. Initially put up by Roosegaarde on Kickstarter in 2015, the project has raised 113,153 euros from 1,577 backers. The first purifier has found a place at the hip Beijing 751 D-Park, where parkgoers can now hang out and enjoy dust-free picnics. This is the first stage of Roosegaarde’s green mega-project called “Landscape of the Future.” The machine will tour the whole of China with hopes of installing the purifiers nationwide. In our beloved Bangkok, where pollution is also a huge problem, a plan to import these life-saving towers seems like a good plan, don’t you think?