Eco India: Can we construct using just plastic waste and dust?

everyday factory worker nitin parmar processes heaps of waste and turns it into something useful [Music] mother my wife [Music] may not understand the science behind his everyday work but the bricks and tiles he makes good help reimagine the use for 3 million tons of Foundry dust in India when natural sand used as a molding material in ferrous and non-ferrous metal casting Industries becomes unsuitable after several cycles of use it piles up as a waste material and is called Foundry dust [Music] y dust is actually a hazardous material which is a byproduct of Industry it also many a times contains Metals heavy metals which can be harmful especially for the fertility of the soil as well as the water because if this is disposed of without I mean in open space and if it comes in contact with flowing water especially when it rains then what would happen is that it will penetrate into the soil disturb the fertility of the soil and also contaminate the ground water [Music] instead of disposing it off in the open if Foundry dust is collected and combined with plastic waste in a 70-30 ratio you get silica plastic blocks which nothing makes foreign [Music] you'll find open dumping of sand and waste and debris all over now this problem has started increasing as the industry is growing if you relate it to the projected growth of India which is going to be two times to three times when you're saying you're going for a 5 billion trillion dollar economy where are we today maybe at one 1.5 trillion so we are talking about scaling up three times when we scale up three times the dust will also scale up three times so this to me is a very huge problem statement which is uh existing silica plastic blocks were the brainchild of Manish kothari an industrialist in the business of Designing supplying and servicing Machinery to Foundry Industries in gujarat's Anand District his research revealed that 100 000 conventional bricks require 10 tons of coal to be produced the same number of silica building blocks he found out can be produced with 300 percent less energy Manish teamed up with upcycle chakra a recycling Waste Company in Anand which helped him create the first silica plastic blocks in 2018. silica plastic block starts its Journey as a dry mix of crushed plastic waste and Foundry dust processed by nitin and his colleagues [Music] when put through an extruder this comes out of the other side in the form of a slurry ready to be molded into any share or size required [Music] at this construction site in Anand where the silica plastic tiles are being used for waterproofing the walls nihar Agarwal of upcycled chakra points out that a silica plastic block is environmentally friendly in more than one way [Music] so that's a part of the process now what if I told you that instead of that the technology that is being used to make all the products is using water which is even lesser than what a family of four uses in a month that is how much that's the only amount of water that goes into it in addition to the less water it consumes a silica building block is said to be two and a half times stronger than a regular brick at the same price passing these feasibility tests has allowed Manish to take this technology to four other units in India what are we addressing we are dressing a waste problem the moment we are addressing our waste problem so the waste is also at rural level waste is also a taluka level so we have now projects where we can work at 5 kg per hour it's a lab model which can be fitted on one table top or we can take it to 1500 kg or 4000 kg per hour which is a modular expandable module [Music] he visited an office space in Baroda City to see if silica building blocks work in the real world at all and what their use cases could be at the mukunda and rohith jotted accountancy firm the flooring furniture and even artifacts are made from silica plastic blocks all as part of their Corporate social responsibility so what we've done with this silica dust and little bit of plastic we made products which are decorated this is actually something that we use as a paper plot still used as a floor type which can get kept as a wall painting this is a brick which can be used in Day to do your construction so get multiple uses so you can actually see physically so you know for us now waste is not cultural waste is not waste it is a raw material so we have to change the connotation as of now manisha's company Rhino machines has sold 20 000 products made of silica plastic blocks and claims to have saved 40 tons of plastic waste and 100 tons of Foundry dust from going to the landfills with the surface barely scratched he and the community have a long way to go thanks for watching Eco India if you like the story please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to scroll.in on YouTube

Channel: Scroll.in

Views: 598,525

Keywords: sustainability, climate change, construction industry, construction work, eco friendly

Id: xmx6-Xc3VMU

Length: 7min 30sec (450 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 01 2022