Uday Sawant, a middle-aged IT professional, recently bought his 2-BHK dream apartment in Andheri, an upmarket and overly concretized western suburb of Mumbai. As he was not happy with the interiors offered by the project developer, he decided to tailor-make his flat according to the needs of his family. He hired a private contractor, Sayed Khan, to renovate the flat. Khan calculated rough cost of the entire renovation work, including his fee, but added a strange clause to it, which read: ‘Disposal of debris to be charged extra’.

“Never before had I heard of such a clause. When I questioned Khan, he informed that the municipal corporation had become strict about unauthorised dumping of debris. Either I helped Khan find a vacant spot nearby to dump the debris, or he would have to hire a lorry to transport and dump the waste somewhere far off. It was a strange situation,” Sawant says.

Sawant’s neighbours recommended that he use a desolate, open patch of low-lying land along the road of the building in which he had bought his dream apartment. Every evening, after the gruelling 9-hours-a-day work, two young boys hired by Khan would fill up the construction and demolition (C&D) waste in large gunny bags and offload them in the low-lying area. Several other residents of the neighborhood were doing the same. The boys, migrant daily wagers from Uttar Pradesh, were accustomed to clandestinely disposing of debris on such open plots. In just two months, a malba hill (debris mound) stood on what was once an open piece of land.

Sawant’s little personal hillock is part of the millions of tons of construction debris created in India every year – inert waste that will eat into precious land unless India commits seriously to recycling.

Most Indian cities have small water bodies in low-lying areas that form natural drainage systems and support various life-forms. Most of these water bodies have been reclaimed to build houses and other infrastructure projects. Having killed our natural drainage systems, flooding in cities is now a common occurrence, even when the rains aren’t very heavy. These low-lying areas are like holding ponds for any city, and must be protected.

Recycling construction debris is not rocket science. But very few people in India are awake to the dangers of the looming mountains of waste. Sawant and other people in his locality seem unaffected by the malba hill, having found a quick solution. But Ruchika Sethi, a resident of Unitech’s Nirvana Country (a 100-acre gated colony in Sector 50, Gurgaon), is fighting a bitter battle against the debris heaps mushrooming all across this satellite town of Delhi. A former country head of a textile firm and mother of a young child with special needs, Sethi knew little about C&D waste until she saw someone burn garbage on a mound of debris just outside the boundary wall of her housing complex.

“Behind our gated colony, there is a 5-acre HUDA [Haryana Urban Development Authority] plot. A couple of years ago, it was flat land and now it has become a 10ft tall debris hillock,” says Sethi. “Last year, I saw someone burn garbage there and decided to intervene. After talking to some local residents, I realised the real issue was illegal dumping of malba, which was fast changing the face of Gurgaon from a swanky satellite town to a development nightmare,” she adds.

Sethi and others who are fighting the malba attack are not doing it on aesthetic and and environmental grounds alone. The haphazard dumping of debris is also a health hazard. “Debris contains pieces of metal, wires, sharp objects, paints etc. and is also high in particulate matter [tiny hovering particles that cause air pollution]. Wastepickers climb up on the debris mound to retrieve recyclable waste and are often injured in the process,” says Bharati Chaturvedi, director of New Delhi-based Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, a non-profit working with wastepickers.

Sethi, along with some local residents, launched the Malba Hatao Group, a citizen-driven programme to put pressure on the multiple local government agencies to bring out a comprehensive debris policy for Gurgaon and recycle its C&D waste. The group has held several meetings with government agencies including HUDA, Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) and the Haryana State Industrial & Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC). The results have been frustrating and familiar. “Government agencies are callous and just don’t care. HUDA tells us to meet MCG, MCG send us to HSIIDC, which in turn directs us to HUDA. It is like a never-ending game of musical chairs,” says an exasperated Sethi.

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In October 2013, Sethi and her colleague, Priya VK Singh, decided to, as they say in the corporate world, ‘escalate’ the problem. They approached the National GreenTribunal (NGT), the special fast-track court set up to deal exclusively with environmental issues. So far, two hearings have been held. Barring the MCG, the agencies, who are respondents, have not even filed their replies. In Gurgaon, debris continues to be dumped in vacant plots, in the water bodies commonly known as johars and in the low-lying areas of the Aravalli hills.

A couple of years ago, Harish Pandey was neither an activist nor an environmentalist. A businessman and a resident of Dahisar in Mumbai, Pandey was drawn into the battle against illegal dumping of debris on mangroves when he bought a flat in Dahisar.

My flat had a beautiful view of thick mangrove forests against the horizon. However, my peace was shattered due to the regular unauthorised dumping of debris on the mangroves around my house,” says Pandey.

About four years ago, Pandey spotted C&D waste being dumped illegally on a 425acre mangrove plot in Dahisar to reclaim land, and decided to complain about it. The state government set up a committee to look into the matter and made Pandey a member. When members of the committee reached the site for inspection, they were not allowed to even enter the plot.

“Both the government and the police officials did not press for site inspection. Rather than being worried about his illegal activities getting exposed, the builder went ahead and filed a case of trespassing against me, and alleged that I manhandled him, tried to murder him and tried to extort Rs 10 crore,” says Pandey (who moved the Bombay High Court to get the FIR quashed and came out clean). In February 2011, debris was removed from the plot and bunds blocking the entry of seawater into the mangroves were broken open on the orders of the Supreme Court. However, despite a February 2002 order from the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority to break open a similar bund constructed by a private builder among the mangroves in Lokhandwala, Andheri (W), the bund remains intact.

The illegal dumping of debris has created several other civic activists in Mumbai. In the 15 years of his career as an environmentalist, Rishi Aggarwal has closely monitored the destruction debris has caused along the coast. “On the morning of November 5, 1998, as part of a bird watching trip, we entered the thick mangrove forest behind Lokhandwala area in Andheri West. There were 15-20 goons who were busy dumping debris on the mangroves,” recalls Aggarwal, who was then in his early twenties. He immediately complained to some environmentalists about it, but no action was taken. Aggarwal, who lives a stone’s throw away from the controversial mangrove plot in Lokhandwala, says, “From 1998 to 2002, over 300 trucks of debris dumped loads daily on this 500 acre plot among a 30ft tall mangrove forest. In these four years, mangroves were flattened and land was illegally reclaimed for developing a golf course and other facilities. Environmentalists approached the Union Environment Ministry – its secretary visited the site in early September 2002 and the same month, the ministry gave a stay order on any further development on the 500acre plot.”

But that was a moment of brief and microscopic relief. Pandey says, “The entire belt from Malad to Mira-Bhayander along the western suburbs of Mumbai is infamous for unauthorised dumping of debris. Depending on the location of debris generation and transportation distance, a lorry driver charges anywhere between Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000 for disposing of debris in wetlands and other low-lying areas in this belt.”

How Big is the Mountain?

According to a conservative estimate, of the 7,000 tons of waste generated daily in Mumbai, C&D waste forms 2,500 tons. Until around 2005, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) had no policy on collection and disposal of C&D waste. Inert waste was dumped in a haphazard manner in low-lying areas, mangroves and creeks. While the corporation framed the Construction & Demolition and Desilting Waste (Management and Disposal) Rules in 2006, implementation is poor and the illegal dumping of debris continues.

This is not to say that the mountains of C&D waste is limited to boom towns like Mumbai and Gurgaon. According to the 11th Five Year Plan, the construction industry is the second largest economic activity after agriculture in India. Investment in construction accounts for nearly 11 percent of India’s GDP. Further, it is estimated that around Rs 16,747 billion will be invested in the infrastructure sector over the next five to 10 years in power, bridges and roads, infrastructure, ports and airports and telecommunications. All this will juice up the construction sector further. But apart from the building of big infrastructure such as bridges and roads, plain old building construction in India is also witnessing an explosive growth. Seventy percent of the building stock proposed by 2030 is yet to be built.

For every building, bridge and sunny fantasy of urban development, there is a corresponding hill (or mountain) of C&D waste. How high is this mountain? There is no definite data on C&D waste generation in India. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India pointed this out in 2008: “No estimates or even guesstimates exist for construction and demolition waste”. Even though built up area has increased dramatically, official estimates of C&D waste have not changed inover a decade.In 2000, the Ministry of Urban Development estimated that 10-12 million tonnes of C&D waste is generatedannually in India. Till date, this official figure remains unchanged. However, CSE’s recent calculations show that India’s building sector alone generated over 626 million tons of C&D waste – that’s 52 times more than official estimates – in 2013 alone.

Urban Local Bodies at Sea

Broadly, there are two reasons for the present debris crisis in the country.

One, municipal bodies have failed to come up with a comprehensive policy on management and disposal of C&D waste. Urban local bodies and development agencies seem genuinely clueless about managing it. Forget about the processing or recycling of debris – the authorities cannot find a piece of land on which to collect C&D waste.

In May 2013, Vinita Singh – a resident of Nirvana Countryin Gurgaon – filed a Right to Information application with both the HUDA and the MCG to ask if there was an officially demarcated area for disposal of C&D waste. Two months later, she received the much-awaited reply. While the MCG said, “no record is available regarding government approved building demolitions malba”,the HUDA replied: “Malba is to be disposed by the concerned owner at appropriate place.”

This was enough to infuriate Singh and other members of the Malba Hatao Group such as Sethi. “What kind of a reply is that? As residents, we ask where we should dump our debris, and HUDA tells us to dispose it an appropriate place. Where is that appropriate place? Is it the drawing room of the top official of HUDA?” asks an angry Sethi.

In 2010, the MCG selected a plot in Kherki Majra for a pilot project to dump inert waste. The location was then shifted to Kachra Chowk on the Gurgaon-Faridabad road in 2011. Tenders for the project were floated, but that was shelved too. Recently, a new municipal commissioner took charge of the MCG and has identified four sites for debris disposal.

Aside: The satellite town of Gurgaon has a unique problem. It is not entirely under the jurisdiction of MCG. While the corporation is in-charge of the urban villages, the HUDA is a government developer owning large tracts of land in the city. Then there is the Town and Country Planning Department of the Haryana government, which also has a say in Gurgaon’s development. The lack of a single enforcement agency ensures no one takes responsibility for C&D waste management, and it is left to residents to find an ‘appropriate place’ for debris disposal.

“In the last 14 months, Gurgaon has had three municipal commissioners.You can imagine the impossibility of getting anything done! We work with one commissioner and by the time some action is to be taken, a new commissioner comes in. We have to then again start from scratch,” laments Sethi.

The second reason for our C&D mountains is the opposite of apathy: it is a calculated and avaricious decision. Debris is the easiest and cheapest way to reclaim land, legally or illegally. Chandrakant Jain, a surgeon who lives in the Samarth Aangan building complex of Oshiwara Lokhandwala Citizens’ Association (OLCA) in Mumbai, has had his own startling experiences with the local municipality. “The municipal corporation is the biggest violator. How can it dump garbage mixed with debris right in the middle of mangroves? Through such dumping it will illegally reclaim land and after some years sell it off for development purposes. This is the practice followed by both the corporation and the private builders in Mumbai,” warns Jain. Jain took me to the Versova Lagoon Refuse Transfer Station, a 2acre plot right in the middle of the mangrove forest that can be accessed only through a kachcha road. This plot is being used by the MCGM as a transit dumping site for both debris and garbage.

Jain also took me to another plot, CTS No 124/1A/2 in Lokhandwala, Andheri West, right by a creek. The area, which falls under Coastal Regulation Zone-1 (CRZ-1), is meant to have the highest level of environmental protection – no construction is allowed here. But the 7.749sq m plot in question is also close to the MCGM’s Versova Lagoon Refuse Transfer Station, and has been illegally reclaimed by dumping debris along the creek. The OLCA has already filed a case and managed to get a stay order from the Bombay High Court. “It is difficult to believe that government agencies were unaware of illegal dumping of debris in the creek for land reclamation. They are hand-in-glove with the builder. We now plan to file a criminal case of fraud against the builder, as he fudged documents to get clearance for the CRZ-1 plot,” says a determined Jain.

When city-level programmes to recycle construction debris exist, they are sadly half-baked and fragmented. The Municipal Corporation of Chandigarh (MCC) is possibly the first urban local body in India to start a scheme for malba collection from households. Launched a decade ago, MCC’s scheme is still functional: residents of the city can call an MCC helpline for malba removal, andthe debris is collected within 48 hours.

However, the collected debris is dumped in low-lying areas to reclaim land. Sanjeev Kumar, public relations officer of the MCC, says, “Our scheme is very popular and people use it regularly against a nominal fee. We have identified 4-5 sites across city where malba is finally dumped. We use debris also in our landfills to cover the garbage with a layer of inert waste.” What about recycling debris and reusing it for construction purposes? Kumar says, “We have a lot of low-lying land in Chandigarh, so our present focus is to reclaim such land and make it available for development purposes. Once we have finished flattening the land, we can consider recycling debris.”

This mindset of using debris to reclaim low-lying land, which is often confused with wasteland, is not limited to Chandigarh alone. Early this month, Mumbai’s municipal corporation launched its own helpline for debris collection. The service costs Rs 235 for a ton of debris, plus 15 percent supervision charge on the total bill.

Posing as a city resident, I called up the concerned municipal officer of Mumbai’s R South ward asking for debris removal. The official’s first response was to recommend using a private contractor to dispose of the debris. When the Iinsisted on getting more details about the debris collection scheme and if a plot was demarcated for depositing malba in my ward, the official conceded that no such area was identified. The municipal truck collects debris and transports it to the outskirts of the city, where C&D waste is dumped in landfillsalong with other kinds of waste.

Why Debris Must be Recycled

Let’s approach the terrifying C&D figures from another direction. The Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) under the Department of Science and Technology have the following estimates: the debris generated by every new construction is about 40kg to 60kg for every square meter of built-up area. Repair and renovation of existing buildings generates 40kg to 50kg per sq m. And the actual demolition of buildings generates 300-500kg of inert waste per sq m. As you read this, one of these three events is very likely happening on your street. It isn’t likely to stop any time soon. So what is the solution?

Even in cities where debris is being collected, it is not being recycled or reused, but being mindlessly used for land reclamation for development purposes.“We need to incentivize collection and reuse of debris. For instance, till 2000, wastepickers did not collect PET bottles. However, as soon as facilities for recycling of PET bottles were set up, wastepickers started collecting these bottles, as they could sell them to the recyclers. We need to do something similar with the C&D waste,” says Chaturvedi.

Bejoy Davis, a civil engineer, is possibly the first Indian entrepreneur to have set up a debris recycling unit in the country. In 2002, when he was working with a NaviMumbai-based voluntary organisation, Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA), Davis set up a decentralized debris recycling plant in Khargar, about 43km from Mumbai.

Davis modified an electric-powered machine used in pharmaceutical and chemical industries for the purpose of debris recycling. Debris was sourced from various construction sites and broken down into particles, then into fine powder, sieved and eventually mixed with cement and water to create sun-dried bricks and paver blocks. Maharashtra’s urban planning agency City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) certified these products and used them to constructing footpaths in Khargar, where the plant was located. “We also supplied bricks and pavers to some architects,”says Davis. YUVA’s debris recycling facility ran for over seven years and shut down in 2009. Davis claims it was a hard task to keep the facility going, as there was no actual support from the government and the non-profit YUVA was not inclined towards running an industrial unit.

“As an entrepreneur, I faced a lot of financial difficulties. We had to buy debris because of which the cost of our recycled products was higher than other products available in the market. There were no tax benefits for our eco-friendly products,”says Davis. In spite of all the odds, Davis tried various permutations and combinations to keep the plant running. He held several meetings with the MCGM officials, but the corporation was not keen to recycle Mumbai’s debris. It still isn’t.

He then decided to approach private builders and make debris recycling units available to them at the project site. “We moved the entire machinery from Khargar to Borivali East, where a bunglow was being demolished to make way for a four-storey building. Within a space of 300-400 square feet, we set up the machinery and started recycling debris to make bricks and paver blocks. I also tried my hand at having a mobile debris recycling unit fitted within a truck. However, the project could not be sustained after 2009,” Davis says with regret.

Just when YUVA’s debris recycling facility shut shop in Navi Mumbai, a new such unit started functioning in Delhi. This 500 ton per day (tpd) pilot project located in Burari is developed by IL&FSEnvironmental Infrastructure & Services Ltd (IEISL) in collaboration with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). Here the C&D waste is recycled into aggregates, which is in turn converted to ready mix concrete, pavement blocks, kerb stones and concrete bricks. These products have been tested in various laboratories.

However, the project is facing two rather ironic teething problems. One, the project site was a low-lying, marshy land that was reclaimed by IEISL for setting up the recycling facility. Two, a major chunk of the waste being received is soil that cannot be processed, and is being dumped in and around the project site. The company is being beseiged by soil.

But Sandeep Malhotra, manager of the IEISL plant at Burari, says it is able to process almost 95 percent of the waste it receives. The plant’s capacity has risen from 500tpd when in started in 2009 to 1300tpd today, and two years ago, it set up a wet processing unit to retrieve soil and sand, “ the major chunk of C&D waste we receive,” he says. However, he points out, the plant doesn’t have enough space for its activities as the recycled products it manufactures lie piled up at the plant – they have few takers. IEISL’s recycled products are 10 percent cheaper than other products available in the market, Malhotra claims,but he says the real problem is that products recycled from debris do not get certification under the Buy Indian StandardsCode. Without this, he says, government agencies are sceptical of using recycled products. “Some agencies like the Delhi Metro are using our products in non-load bearing areas, such as parking and footpaths. But a lot more needs to be done,” he says.

Davis, who has studied official documents on the IEISL plant, claims that the IEISL unit is bound to make losses because the company has not included overheads in its balance sheet. Avoiding direct comment on the matter, Malhotra says the IEISL plant is first of its kind in the country, and a lot of investment is also going into R&D activities. “That is why such projects need the government’s active support.”

Whether they are from small manufacturers like Davis or big units like IEISL, recycled products will find it tough to compete with products manufactured in the unorganized sector. Excise duty and value-added tax (VAT) on finished products makes them rather expensive.

On top of the poor margins, India actually has legal restrictions against the use of recycled products in the construction industry, demanding that the aggregates for concrete – largely sand, gravel and crushed stone – be ‘naturally sourced’.This means that only virgin materials (sand, aggregate) mined directly from nature, destroying coasts and mountains,can be used. Any use of recycled aggregate is ‘illegal’.

“We need to amend the BIS code to include both naturally sourced as well as recycled material. The government must make use of recycled products mandatory wherever it is technologically feasible, in government projects or new developments. Only then will the entrepreneurs come forward to set up debris recycling units,” says Chaturvedi.

Changing these outdated laws and the attitude towards the unfortunate by-products of our construction boom is absolutely necessary. Because a 626 million ton mountain is creeping up on you.

Nidhi Jamwal is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist with over 15 years of experience in environmental journalism.