Recycling C&D waste to facilitate a circular economy

The industry trends for buyback, recycling equipment and sand waste are incredibly positive, and the National Clean Air Program launches across 154 ULBs. This will encourage investment and development of construction and demolition waste processing facilities in a big way helping the nation at large, shares Manish Bhartia, Promoter & Managing Director, CDE Asia.

What unique characteristics of your equipment line give a head start?
CDE Asia’s vision to make sand sustainable and cities free of waste gives us a decided edge over the competition because of our expert grasp over sand ‘solutions’ versus knowledge of ‘equipment’ or ‘products’ for symptomatic solutions only.

Our advanced waste management solutions for recycling assorted wastes allow customers to recover quality sand and aggregates for high-value construction applications, including concrete and asphalt production, thereby facilitating a circular economy.

How are the ongoing infrastructure projects increasing the demand for sand and aggregates?
India is on a growth trajectory, which means more housing projects being built, more buildings being demolished and a flurry of elaborate infrastructure, Recycling C&D Waste to Facilitate a Circular Economy which currently stands at 5 billion tonnes per annum. However, the divide between demand and supply of natural sand has threatened the future of urban living.

With vast experience in sustainable waste management solutions, we identify conventional waste materials such as Construction & Demolition Waste (C&D) and utilise our patented waste recycling facilities to convert them into sustainable sand and green aggregates for construction activities.

Can you shed some light on the impacts of the global supply chain on equipment procurement and deployment?
The world has become a tiny place, and as a result, the global supply  chain significantly impacts equipment procurement and deployment. We felt a massive impact in real-time even post the economies started opening after the Covid-19 pandemic. Containers across shipping lines were either unavailable or prohibitively expensive to procure. Spare parts and components with a lead time of around 12 to 16 weeks are currently available with lead times of 55 to 60 weeks. This has impacted the manufacturing of plants and machinery and the end commissioning across all levels. Capex planning of several organisations has gone for a toss. Thereby our company is working towards indigenising components wherever feasible.

What trends do you see in the industry for buyback and recycling equipment and sand waste?
Buyback of material produced by processing construction and demolition waste is still nascent. While CDE has collaborated with several organisations to raise awareness in this domain, even the government policy has supported the use of recycled materials, the process of raising awareness is still in its early stages. At the same time, several Infrastructure focussed organisations are proactively reaching out for recycled building materials and want to include this as a part of their mainstream procurement. Since the return on investments is attractive, several large organisations and fund houses are showing keen interest in investing in this area on the recycling equipment front. There are several mega projects wherein there is a need to recycle the waste in-site and use back the output of the recycling process there and then. The industry trends are incredibly positive. Launching the National Clean Air Program across 154 ULBs will encourage investment and development of construction and demolition waste processing facilities in a big way helping the nation at large.

What are the key sustainable features of your state-of-the-art sand manufacturing machines?
All our equipment is climate-conscious as they economise energy use and recycle 95 percent of the water used. The high level of automation allows plants to be installed with minimum hassle, taking up significantly small spaces. Each of our products is scrutinised under Finite Element Analysis to ensure that only the optimum amount of material is used and their weight remains regulated for minimum power consumption.

With the increasing generation of C&D waste in India, how do you evaluate the future in reducing, reusing and recycling?
With natural sand resources running low, ‘reduce, reuse, and recycle is the only mantra that will accommodate and sustain the aggressive growthin sand and aggregate demand for urban infrastructure projects. The only way out is to process the huge waste created by building and demolition activities to produce high-value resources that can be reutilised in the construction industry.