This inspired her to start Strawcture, a company that makes building materials and panels out of agricultural waste. These panels can be used to make drywall, false ceiling, furniture as well flooring options. The founder and CEO of Delhi-based Strawcture sees this as a way to bring sustainable practices to construction — a segment that has not seen any real innovation in the materials used.
In today’s world, where every company is looking at ways to go greener with its processes and products, perhaps there hasn’t been enough focus on this area of construction. Among the basic necessities of roti, kapda and makaan, the first two — food and clothing — are seeing a lot of changes towards embracing sustainability. However, the housing or construction industry has only seen piecemeal efforts in this area.
The construction industry is known to be one of the most conservative industries as it has followed a similar pattern since ages. Pandey says that the last innovation in the construction industry was cement, which started replacing lime mortar after the 1820s. The construction industry might be the last one to become sustainable, she says.
Emotional investments
Some of the reasons behind this include lack of awareness, a conservative mindset and fear of large investments going wrong.“Construction, fundamentally, is a very closed industry. When you go to buy a house, you buy it through a broker, who gives it to you through a developer. There’s no direct transaction happening with the person whose materials are going into that building. So you don’t even get to engage with the end user. Even if I engage at my end, my client has to go to the interior designer through the broker,” Pandey says, adding that this is not as simple as buying an organic bread or a recycled t-shirt from a website.This also brings the issue of lack of awareness about sustainable building practices and materials among consumers. Pandey says construction is mostly a B2B system and therefore, is very risk averse. Until the stakeholders have tried and tested the product for years, they are not willing to switch to anything new.
Also, there are emotions attached to buying a house. “It’s more of an emotional buy,” adds Pandey.
Abhimanyu Singh, CTO of Jaipur-based Hexpressions, which makes building panels from recycled honeycomb paper, says people spend their life savings in building a whole house and do not want to compromise. “There is this question in their minds — ‘This is all my heart and money. If it doesn’t work, What will I do?’ While a house made of sustainable materials is as good as a traditional one, the awareness has not yet reached the customers to make them confident about it,” he says.
This has made people like Pandey realise that the construction building material-based startups or new companies are not going to see a spurt in growth anytime soon.
Hopeful future
Talking about the benefits of a sustainable building over traditional building, Pandey cites an example of a one BHK or a 300 sqft house. If made through the traditional building materials such as cement, brick and mortar, the entire structure will have a carbon emission of 66,000 kg.
Singh says this can be reduced by using sustainable materials. Hexpressions makes panels completely out of recycled paper, which means not a single drop of water is used. A single square metre of brick alone will need 350 litres of fresh water. “A two-bedroom house produces 80 tons of carbon. This is equivalent to buying five brand new cars or flying economy-class air from Hong Kong to London 24 times. With sustainable construction, it emits only 14 to 15 tons of CO2,” he says.
It’s not that the concept of sustainable buildings and its impact on the environment has not reached the government. Pandey mentions that in India, only commercial buildings are getting incentives to go green.
“So if you’re a developer and are making a green or LEED certified building, you can avail certain government incentives. There is definitely a push from customers to build green corporate buildings for Fortune 500 companies. After Covid, we are again at that phase where employees are coming back to offices. So there is a newfound awareness for sustainable construction and to work in a sustainable environment. Still, the residential sector has not seen any incentive, which is why it’s harder to push sustainable projects in the residential segment,” she adds.
To change this, Strawcture is with developers such as DLF and Brigade and has bagged projects for Wipro, Citibank and Infosys.
JipuJose James, Managing Director, Project & Development Services, JLL India, says that this year India emerged as a top country with LEED Zero green building projects that have reached net zero or net positive status in the categories of carbon, energy, water or waste. However, substantial efforts are required as this is a large ecosystem in a fast-growing economy with a mix of players ranging from individual vendors to contractors.
“However, we are seeing good policy changes implementing initiatives like green corridors, a lower threshold of electricity open access at 100 kW, Perform Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme for buildings. These are macro-level efforts driving sustainability in this industry,” he adds.
