Urban mining

To address appropriate C&DW utilisation, elements of the existing policy framework need to be revisited

In late April, the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram angrily ordered its officials to find out who dumped “malba” — the Hindi word for Construction and Demolition Waste (C&DW) on either side of the Gurugram-Faridabad road. Apparently, huge quantities of C&DW — about 500 tractor-trolleys — had been off-loaded “illegally” there. Officials were ordered to track the violators and stop this menace. Such knee-jerk reactions would, of course, be common-place across India’s 7,935 cities and towns.

Welcome to the world of “urban mining”. Construction accounts for nearly 65 per cent of the total investment in infrastructure. Population growth, a rapidly growing economy,