State pushes Mumbai builders to use precast material to curb pollution

Maharashtra plans to promote precast construction to reduce Mumbai's air pollution, offering incentives to real estate firms for off-site manufacturing.

MUMBAI: To contain rising air pollution levels in Mumbai, the state government plans to encourage the use of precast components in construction. State environment minister Pankaja Munde said the government is framing a policy that will offer real estate companies and contractors incentives to switch to precast construction, vis-à-vis building these components on-site.

State pushes Mumbai builders to use precast material to curb pollution

Munde, who underlined that prefabricated building components would be manufactured outside Mumbai, said, “We have already taken action against ongoing construction works for pollution control. Precast construction will help developers to continue work without impacting the climate. This will be a win-win for them and will reduce air pollution drastically.” She said the policy would be applicable to both private and public construction projects.

Prefabricated construction minimises carbon emissions as precast concrete components are manufactured off-site in a controlled environment. Traditional on-site construction methods often involve extensive operations leading to air pollution, higher energy consumption and high greenhouse emissions.

Although manufacturing these components outside the city will increase transportation costs, it will lower the consumption of resources such as steel and cement, while also enabling strict quality control, according to officials from the state environment department.

In January this year, the state environment department and local bodies stared cracking down on construction sites that contributed to a high Air Quality Index (AQI) in their vicinity. Many sites had been served notices to either halt construction work or take corrective measures such as sprinkling water etc to reduce air pollution arising out of construction activity.

Munde said a comprehensive policy to curb pollution will soon be unveiled by the environment department. “The work of the task force and drawing a road map to control pollution in Mumbai is also underway. Various other departments and agencies like the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation are being taking into confidence to fix their roles in implementation of the policy,” she said.

Apart from construction sites, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and BMC are also taking action against bakeries and restaurants that depend on traditional cooking methods that use coal and firewood. These establishments have been served notices to switch their ovens to non-polluting energy sources such as electricity, LPG and PNG by the first week of July.

Munde also said her department is taking steps to make sure that Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) set up by cooperative housing societies were functioning according to protocol. “Large cooperative societies have set up STPs, but they are not being operated properly. We will take steps for stricter monitoring to ensure that societies utilise them,” she said.