To protect topsoil and the environment, the government must immediately spearhead a campaign for using alternatives of conventional bricks, said experts at a seminar in the capital recently.
“… Switching to alternatives like compressed, hollow, and thermal blocks is critical for ensuring food security and conservation of the environment,” said Mohammad Shamim Akhtar, director of Housing and Building Research Institute (HBRI), at a seminar on how to popularize alternative bricks.
Instead of destroying the fertile topsoil, abundantly available river-dredged soil could be a primary raw material for manufacturing alternative building blocks, he said.
These are not only environment-friendly but a structure made of them is 20 to 30 percent less expensive compared to a reinforced concrete structure, he said.
Chief guest of the seminar Housing and Public Works Minister Mosharraf Hossain said the government was going to ensure that there was no conventional brick kilns by 2020 with a view to conserve topsoil and forests, and to encourage the use of alternative building blocks.
Seven organizations -- Buet, HBRI, Oxfam Bangladesh, Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (Bela), Green Architecture Cell of Buet, The Structural Engineers Ltd, and Jagoroni Chakra Foundation -- jointly organized the seminar on Buet campus.
