New Delhi: At a time when Indian cities are struggling to control their air pollution levels, a new report by the Centre for Science and Environment has found that most of them lack institutional preparedness to carry out systematic and scientific management of construction and demolition waste, one of the key sources of pollution in urban areas.

Titled Construction and Demolition Waste: Closing the Loop for Sustainability, the report was released here recently by CSE at a national conference.

Releasing the report, CSE Director General Sunita Narain said, “C&D waste management is a potential game changer. A decade back, the concern with C&D waste was not about air pollution, but about saving waterbodies from the dumping of this waste in them. By 2018-19, the issue of C&D waste became hot and this time, it was about dust in the air which was contributing to pollution. The realisation struck that there lies a huge opportunity in changing things for the better in this sector.”

Quoting data from the National Investment Promotion and Facilitation Agency, the report says India’s construction industry is expected to reach US $1.4 trillion by 2025 and contribute about 13 per cent to the national economy. India will be adding billions of square meters of space to create affordable housing units, commercial spaces, cold storage, industrial corridors, smart cities, roads and highways, among other things.

“This will not only generate enormous amounts of waste but also increase the demand for natural and virgin building materials that require mining,” says Rajneesh Sareen, director of the Sustainable Buildings and Habitat Programme, CSE.

Sareen points to the report, which says that as per the draft National Resource Efficiency Policy of 2019, India has already increased its material consumption six times from 1.18 billion tonnes in 1970 to seven billion tonnes in 2015. India’s resource extraction rate stands at 1,580 tonnes per acre as compared to the world average of 450 tonnes per acre; its material productivity is low. While India imports many critical raw materials such as sand, it has a much lower recycling rate at 20-25 per cent compared to developed countries of Europe.

“Besides the impacts that mining and resource extraction already exert, mismanagement of C&D waste - often dumped unscientifically in ecologically sensitive areas such as wetlands or low-lying areas - causes serious environmental damage. To add to this, the construction process in itself is a major dust and particle generator that leads to local pollution and exposure. This is a major concern as air pollution has emerged as a key public health issue in Indian cities. Some of the more disturbing serious health effects include lung cancer, silicosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma,” adds Mitashi Singh, programme manager of the sustainable buildings and habitat programme at CSE.