Lupine Publishers- Trends in Civil Engineering and its Architecture
Opinion
Human activities on earth produce in considerable quantities of
wastes more than 2,500 million tons per year, including industrial
and agricultural wastes from rural and urban societies. This creates
serious problems to the environment, health and also the land
filling. Now a day the concrete and bricks are most used man made
materials in the world. The Indian construction industry alone
consumes approximately 400 million tons of concrete every year
and the relative amount of bricks too. Therefore the demand of
the concrete, bricks and the required raw materials are very high.
This causes the hike in the costs and demand of cement, bricks
fine and coarse aggregates. Environmental degradation, high
energy consumption and financial constraints has forced various
organizations in India and abroad to recommend various qualitative
guidelines for generation, treatment, handling, transport, disposal
and recycling of non-hazardous and hazardous wastes. On the other
side due to exponential growth of population in recent years, there
is great demand for construction and thus increasing pressure
for use of natural resources causing their acute shortage. There
is environmental problem due excessive use of topsoil in brick
manufacturing.
Natural materials being exhaustible in nature, its
quantity is declining gradually. Also, cost of extracting good quality
of natural material is increasing. Concerned about this, the scientists
are looking for alternative materials for construction,
and industrial waste product is one such category. If these materials
can be suitably utilized in construction, the pollution and disposal
problems can be partly reduced. It is now a global concern, to find a
social, techno-economic, environmental friendly solution to sustain
a cleaner and greener environment. In recent years, the utilization
of solid waste is the challenge for the civil and environmental
engineers to utilize economic friendly supplementary cementitious
materials produced at reasonable cost with the low possible
environmental impact. Some of the researchers successfully tested
and used industrial wastes such as blast furnace slag, fly ash etc.
which offers benefits like potential savings in natural resources
and energy, reduction in impact of CO2 emission, and re-use of
wastes which otherwise would have been used as landfill and might
require a waste management program. The Industrial systems are
linear systems taking in raw material and giving out products and
wastes. In their effort to minimize negative impact on environment,
industries have been traditionally collecting and treating the wastes
before disposal.
This approach i.e. end-of-pipe approach, to wastes
has been resulting in the removal of pollutants from one medium
and placing in some other medium rather than ending the cycle
of wastes, leading to the wasteful spending of resources. Further
waste management by this approach is proving to be a burden on
the industry. The magnitudes of limitations associated with end-ofpipe
approach have recently been forcing the industries to examine
this approach critically and adopt an alternative waste handling
approach. Waste handling approach is leading to environment
friendly technology and processes. It integrates both waste reduction
approach and end-of-pipe treatment approach. In India around
1000 million tonnes of solid waste is being generated annually
as by-products during industrial, mining, municipal, agricultural,
and other processes. Out of this about 300 million tonnes is
inorganic waste-nonhazardous and hazardous. Industrialization
in India has no doubt helped in economic growth of our country
but at the same time it also increases the pollution problem
manifold. Environmental conservation is an indisputable industrial
responsibility, and market competitiveness has demanded proactive
and concrete actions from industry to preserve the environment.
This demand promotes the minimisation of environmental
impacts through the use of clean technologies that minimise waste
generation and maximise reuse. The use of such technologies leads
to the utilisation of wastes, energy savings and other gains.
Lot of
studies have been done for utilisation of this waste specific to the
properties of the waste as building materials. To build sustainable
environment and to meet the demand of construction material it is very
important to find the link between waste generating industries
and construction industry. Our toothpaste industry sector is
presently facing the problems of safe disposal of solid waste. The
very feature of toothpaste industry waste is that it contains CaCo3
in abundance; attracts the attentions of Civil Engineers. The author
has developed a technology for utilizing waste from toothpaste
industry as an alternative to virgin materials and building products.
It is very much possible to manufacture good quality of clay bricks,
concrete and hard grade bitumen by blending some amount of this
sludge, thus solving issue of waste disposal and producing a low
cost environmental friendly building material.
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