Can we afford to ignore the Eco Challenge? Part 2
In the first part of this article we spoke about challenges in front of the ‘builder community’ today and why how we have built so far is certainly not the way to continue building.
There are many other different ways of building. At BCIL and ZED Homes, for example, we have stopped completely the use of many materials that the regular builder cannot do without. We use no bricks, no electric geysers, no concrete blocks, no clay blocks, no vitrified tiles or ceramic tiles, no chemicals for water treatment and swimming pools, no toxic paints, no chemical base for water-proofing. We have gone further. For captive power generation, we use no diesel for our gen sets. For lighting in homes we make, we use no fluorescent tube lights, and no incandescent lamps.
During construction we use no lime-rendering for our walls, no regular ceiling fans at 75 watts, no bore-wells for water. We have gone even further. In our current projects extending to nearly a million sq. ft. of residential housing, we use no sand for construction of our walls and roofs. We are switching to using non-cement alternatives for mortar.
We are constantly innovating. We are beginning to understand why building blocks have been the way they have been made so far. We are beginning to understand for every material that we use what the energy component is in the upstream stages of its manufacture—so we know what is embodied energy used. We are mindful of the distance from which we buy our materials, for transport energy counts too in stacking up such carbon costs of building.
We are beginning to break down every embodied energy component of material that we use in building the million sq. ft. that BCIL is set to create in the next 3 years.
We are asking more questions than we answer. We are asking for increasing use of materials with a higher renewable base. Of course, we are asking to see how the economics are still compatible, for we cannot build at costs that are any higher financially than it is for the regular builder, while it’s important for us to see that it’s ecologically not expensive.
It is easy for the regular builder or businessman to dismiss this as another wasteful debate belonging to seminar discussions. It is easy for someone to say that this is a new sphere of innovation and that they don’t need to adopt these as of now. It is easy to ask, “Why should I be doing something new when the others are continuing to do the old?”
Green buildings are not about a set of formula that offer pat solutions. Nor is it about government regulation statutorily demanding that you do something that they want you to. This is about your own long-term viability as a company and as an engineering or design professional. This is about how you reinvent yourself and your company. This is about creating an environment that is conducive for growth of our cities into the future. This is about recognizing the grim reality before you that as a builder you are not going to have limestone available just as easily available as it was the last 50 years for cement manufacture. It is about realizing every material that you use that is extracted from Earth has got be conserved or used judiciously if you want this to be available beyond you and your generation of businessmen and creators, for inherent in such man-made creation is destruction.
All this will require working together. It is not just that the building industry needs to respond to this with a sense of urgency that our cities need today. It is for the government, too, to wake up to some of these needs in a way that they encourage the environment for a builder with conscious approaches that do not offer subsidies and concession.
The businessman is, after all, doing no favour by doing what is for profit. What the government needs to do is to reach out as partners recognizing the need for a quick transition in the next 10 years to transit into a future where we use materials and natural resources judiciously. The government needs to offer, for starters, tax breaks for buildings that seek pre-design green certification and pledge their commitment to build and use resources efficiently. Town planners have to allow the use of setback areas of every building for creating green and sustainable infrastructure that address the need for energy, water, and waste as being localized and renewable as possible. Such green infrastructure include sewage treatment plants for waste water, underground lines for dual plumbing, terraces used for solar heating and lighting purposes. It extends to biogas digester plants and organic compost making units that convert wet waste to wealth. Local plan-sanctioning authorities have to recognize these to be part of FSI norms and not exclude these from setback computations. There are many such sustainable systems that reduce a housing colony’s or an office block’s need for dependence on city infrastructure for energy, water or waste. There should be one voice among the 3 or 4 agencies of the government that have to offer such clearances.
Good governance from any government is about creating the right environment for people and organizations so they can make their cities more livable.
What such good governance also means is that the financial sector responds with a drop in interest cost and priority lending for buildings that certify green. Banks need to offer more attractive home finance rates, for encouraging homeowners to go green on the flats and homes they buy.
Local authority who offer sanction to housing plans should ensure that they don’t turn a blind eye to the lack of coordination between other agencies like the water supply board, the power corporation, or the pollution control board. This will mean that residential or commercial projects which are zero-dependent on the Power or Water Corporation are allowed not to pay statutory deposits. The Pollution Control Board will have to work with the local authority to ensure that sanction plans recognize setback areas used for meeting PCB norms.
There is plenty more that good governance can offer with the banking industry responding both at levels where they offer priority lending to green builder-companies, or offer a drop in percentile points on home finance lending that encourage the property buyer to look at patronizing such green building business in the residential or commercial segments.
There’s a grim story unfolding before us…
The story is just about beginning to unfold. There is bad news before us over the next 20 years if we are not going to sit up, take notice and drive and derive plans and actions that will dramatically bring down our use of resources from Earth. The building industry is by far the largest in the world and, sadly, one of the most disorganized, having remained over traditionally and over the last century beyond the interest of professional managers and management. The building industry has grown over the last 50 years with nearly 90% of it being in the small and unorganized sectors which have simply no ability to plan effectively. The large building industry is no better: they have not responded to change and the demands of the future with direct action that spells innovation. Our architects have remained cloistered, not recognizing the grim import of all that is lying ahead of us.
The cities drain every resource
Our focus on cities is so lopsided that it has been at the expense of our countryside. The battles of the tribals of middle India; the tyranny inflicted on the millions on the Narmada basin that Medha Patkar and Baba Amte have fought futilely for. Our cities do not represent even 2% of our countryside, yet have over 35 per cent of our population living off them. Our cities offer over 70 per cent of sales tax contributions, over 65 per cent of income tax revenue, and over 60 per cent of GDP growth. So they consume like omnivores. And so, the focus of resource use remains on the cities at the expense of the countryside.
Massive amount of water resources are driven to our cities with long-distance supply programs that are huge on energy and financial cost, and friendly for contractors. Power is generated with dams that block rivers and displace many millions whose livelihood is dependent on the river and forest that we deplete to feed our ever-hungry cities. Our models of development that have looked at only creating monetary growth have led to the calculated decimation of large and rich ecosystems that had survived reasonably well for many thousand years and supported life on Earth.
It is in your hands and your interest to go green and sustainable at the highest levels of abuse that happens in any industry. And it is not just the buildings you make, but every single thing that we produce and transport and consume in our search for greater comfort and quality of life and living. It is at your peril that you ignore these directions, as a businessman, as a professional, as any one who has to simply live on Earth.
