‘I don’t like this floor, we must change the tiles’, said Ramesh. ‘Let’s go for a makeover of the entire house’ suggested his better half. For this MNC couple, there is no dearth of funds. One eating out costs them 5K and all Sundays are for exploring a new food joint. There is no wonder they think of spending for a new ambience. Interior designers are brilliant business people, who could lure them to improve their budget to Rs 25 lacs easily. Just 3 years back they shifted to this new flat, spending a huge sum towards interior. The interior guy added few bucks for shifting broken tiles and construction waste to somewhere. When asked curiously, ‘where he would dump the construction waste?’, he said, ‘there are agencies for this purpose. Perhaps it goes to some landfills or outskirts of the city.

On a recent visit to a rural segregation centre in Bangalore it was found that the dry and wet waste management was satisfactory. They dispose sorted waste of plastic for a price to the recyclers while wet waste was composted. The waste management appeared manageable because the segregation centre catered to the need of a Panchayat division comprising of eight villages only. After visiting the waste management facilities at that rural segregation centre, we came out to see a vast dump yard outside with heaps of construction waste. We were told that the construction waste was lying for along time and the segregation workers were clueless as to what to do with the same.

While the construction industry per se is raising the carbon footprints as the levels of air, water and noise pollution increase on the one hand while the loss of biodiversity due to conversion of land use on the other. Besides the unavoidable byproducts are growing waste and raising particulate matters due to cutting, sizing and removing excess material which may or may not be of any economic value for the developers. In fact the Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste accounts for 40% of the waste generated worldwide, according to a www.worldmetrics.org data. It is feared that the construction waste is growing in an alarming rate globally, painting a gloomy picture of the environmental impact of the building industry worldwide. Debris of demolition and construction are extremely high in China, UK and US while other developing countries also follow suit. Perhaps the need of the hour for the construction industry is to revisit its approach, to encompass sustainable practices and innovative solutions to reduce, reuse, and recycle to ensure a more responsible and efficient future in building our world.

Besides we should not forget one important issue related to the labour intensive construction industry. But the working conditions of the workers are pathetic as they survive amidst dust and particulate matter. Most of these workers who come from states like Bihar, UP, Jharkhand, Odisha and North east live in a precarious condition. The level of pollutants which are breathed by them result in chronic diseases. Most of their families live near the construction sites in unhygienic conditions and shift to next construction site once the project is over. Not long ago, we all lived in same old house for generations as joint families with limited comforts. We lived happily in a cleaner environment under zero waste conditions. Today, zero waste is only in papers!