New Delhi, Oct 3 (IANS): Bollywood actor Suniel Shetty launched a range of portable spittoons in the national capital on Sunday and expressed the hope that the products would prevent people from spitting in public places.

At the product launch, it was revealed that the Indian Railways spends Rs 1,200 crore and a lot of water every year to remove the stains and marks left by people spitting in railway stations and on the tracks.

Apart from the burden of cleaning up, spitting in public places is also a health hazard. The germs in a person's circulate in a radius of 27 feet around the spot where a person spits. The Disaster Management Act has made spitting in public places a punishable offence liable for fines ranging from Rs 200 to Rs 5,000.

The products launched by Shetty have been introduced by a Nagpur-based company under the brand name EzySpit. The company's co-founder, Ritu Malhotra, said the spittoons come in the forms of pocket pouches (reusable 10 to 15 times), mobile containers (reusable 20 to 40 times) and spit bins (reusable 5,000 times).

These products, which has been under development since 2015, feature macromolecule pulp technology and contain a material that locks in bacteria and viruses present in saliva. Initially, the products will be targeted at Delhi-NCR, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

The aim behind this start-up, according to its founders, is to spread awareness about eco-friendly 'spittoon products' and also to contain the bad habit of spitting in public places.