Brick: sustainability through policy

The brick has become a remarkable political symbol with the laying of the silver brick in Ayodhya, India, recently. A tangible material in this whole exercise; the humble, everyday ‘brick’became the symbol of nationalism. While this building material holds such a shiny political campaign in the form of a silver brick today, the on-ground situation of brick kilns is rather grim, which exploits labour and deteriorates the environment. To change this scenario there needs to be change in policy that includes an array of solutions for brick making, including Stabilised Compressed Earth Blocks, adobe etc. To keep a check on these ecological imbalances, firstly at policy level intervention, the government should initiate decentralised, smaller and regional production systems instead of global chains. Secondly, alternate construction materials should be made mainstream, and an array of innovative local technologies should be incorporated instead of propagating one chief solution, universally, for brick production. Absence of environmental emission policies and regulatory enforcement leave no incentive for brick manufacturers to adopt less polluting industries and the added lack of policies that address the demand-side issues, even though appropriate technologies may be present, make it worse. There is an urgent need to revamp the brick industry of the world, especially in the emerging economies where the next decades will see exponential growth.