Hardik Panchal - Director, Hardy Smith

“Both the government and the industry must collaborate to formulate policies that enforce and incentivise use of recyclable and eco-friendly materials in construction projects.”
Hardik Panchal, Director, Hardy Smith

Responsible Indian construction companies are consciously adopting green building practices by selecting and using eco-friendly and recycled materials in their projects, especially, post RERA implementation.

Saving natural resources

Increasing use of materials those can be recycled, reused, and recreated will lead to saving of natural resources and virgin materials. Making buildings with glass facades to reduce electricity consumption, using modern furniture made with reusable/recyclable materials like WPC, Plastic, Textile etc are measures that help save natural resources as they reduce the consumption of conventional materials.

Hardy Smith an active participant

We are supplying WPC doors and windows made from recyclable plastic composites to construction projects, and WPC panels for making furniture and partitions; these can be used directly without any surface preparation and can be recycled and reused 2-3 times.

We offer materials with buyback assurance of 25%; this encourages the practice of getting these materials back to the factories at one-fourth of their price. Once this becomes a regular practice, we will be able to supply our WPC products at half the cost prevailing in the market. This will save trees due to the reduced consumption of virgin materials. Though there can be shipping challenges for using old or waste materials, the logistics can be systematized with reverse logistic planning.

Support and solutions

Both the government and the industry must work hand in hand for making policies that enforce and incentivise use of recyclable and eco-friendly materials in construction projects for both the private and public sectors. All government tenders should be mentioned with such materials only. Special incentive schemes can be declared for entrepreneurs developing sustainable products.

Developing advanced technologies for recycling and reusing waste materials, and standardizing building design are some measures that can help a lot. For example, if all door and window sizes are standardized across the country in all the construction projects, it will encourage setting up of plants for processing waste and recycled materials.

We need to collaborate with international research organisations for learning and adopting technologies for recycling waste materials like fly ash, wood, ceramics, glass, plastic, rubber tires etc, and even encourage our universities to include a subject on waste management for a circular economy.