Brick biting

CONSTRUCTION: The environmentally friendly fly-ash bricks could possibly replace clay bricks.

The recipe seems rather simple. Knead a few waste materials together and "mould" it into bricks. These so-called fly ash bricks "" made by mixing fly ash, lime and gypsum (FaL-G) "" are said to be stronger than the regular red clay bricks, and cheaper to make, since they don't require burning of expensive coal or large tracts of land for the kiln. Yet, they are still to find serious use in home construction. That is set to change.

The change will be courtesy the three major environmental credits that these dull grey bricks boast of "" non-use of coal (so no greenhouse emissions), usage of land degrading waste material and saving of fertile topsoil.

That explains the backing of the government, and of the World Bank (as trustee of the Community Development Carbon Fund), which will route carbon revenues to makers of these bricks through a non-profit organisation "" INSWAREB (Institute for Solid Waste reset and Ecological Balance).

About 100 fly-ash-brick-making micro units are proposed as part of the plan, informs World Bank's environment specialist Kirtan C Sahoo. Will they find enough buyers?

"Finding buyers is never a problem," says Jitendra Parikh whose Ecovision Industries sells 30,000 such bricks a day, mostly to industrial sheds in the neighbourhood of the Surajpur Industrial Area at Greater Noida, to companies like Honda Siel, Yamaha Motors and New Holland Tractors.

These brick plants work best in the vicinity of coal-burning power plants which generate the fly ash which is given free to the brick makers, which must locate their units nearby to avoid transport bills that could price the bricks out of the market.

At Rs 2 per brick, their price is "just the same" as the ubiquitous red bricks, albeit the good quality ones, but builders "" like Omaxe senior VP Praveen Goyal "" say that these bricks are 10-20 per cent costlier. And that too if they are available at all.

Construction firm DLF Laing O'Rourke finds these bricks crack-prone as well as moisture absorbing, both of which render then unusable for good construction.

N Kalidas, founder director of INSWAREB, blames "copycat (read incompetent) fly ash brick makers" "" though brick makers nevertheless enjoy significant lobbying power.

That can be gauged from the severe shortage of bricks the nation faced when the All India Bricks and Tiles Manufacturing Association (AIBTMF) went on strike in late 2004 against a government notification mandating increasing use of fly-ash in bricks.

Fly-ash bricks can be used to make roads too. "We have demonstrated laying of roads with these bricks where 40-ton truckers are moving," says Kalidas, who claims that the life of such a road is over 100 years. "But no contracter or politician wants roads that last so long," he shrugs.

For lovers of red bricks, the World Bank has also arranged carbon revenues for less polluting clay kilns. Modernisation of this industry is good news, as the future of the construction sector rides on the humble brick.