Doors, windows, plumbing fittings, steel frames, and slider doors – all recycled.
By Aiswarya Sriram
Bangalore, April 10, 2019.
The timber businessmen and wood artisans at K.R. Market say that people buy old windows and doors to construct or reconstruct their houses. The idea is more economical and is also a solution to increasing garbage menace.
There is an organization called Hasiru Mane in Bangalore that helps build houses out of construction waste.
Construction waste includes soil, concrete, steel pillars, remains of demolished buildings, wood, and plastic. According to Construction and Demolition Waste Management Rules 2016, the construction waste generators should keep waste inside their premises and dispose, or process the waste properly by segregating the recyclable and non-recyclable materials.
Citizens prefer to build their houses using old materials these days. Iqbal, owner of a Timber shop in K.R. Market says, “People come and ask me for old doors and windows – around five to six people come to my shop in a day to buy these. They say that they want to build a house, so they are buying recycled items.”
G.Dasarthi has built a house using construction waste. He has not used tiles and says that he got a good company’s bathroom fittings for the construction of his house. The two-storey home is made of wood and glass from the demolished buildings. There are no steel bars to the windows, so as to decrease the metal usage.
He says, “Using construction debris to rebuild was the best option since it is economically beneficial. The traditional way of building a house can cost up to Rs. 40 lakhs; it dropped down to Rs. 17 lakhs when I planned to build out of construction waste.” The house now is around eight years old.
Architect Ashwini Kumar says, “Most of the things from the demolished structures could be used to rebuild a house: doors, windows, plumbing fittings, steel frames, and slider doors – all of these can be reused. The cost of construction decreases and is actually a better option as the products which are perfectly fine costs you half the price of new ones.”
