Builders urged to eschew bricks

Vietnamese businesses should boost production and use of non-baked construction materials as they are more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, a senior official said Saturday.

Pham Xuan Bac, deputy director of the Construction Ministry’s Department of Construction Materials said that demand for building materials was increasing on average by 10-12 per cent per year.

According to the building material development plan chalked out until 2020, the use of bricks will rise to 32 billion by 2015 and 42 billion by 2020. This would require 60-64 million cubic metres of clay and 3,200 hectares of agricultural land.

It would also require more than 6 million tonnes of coal to bake these bricks, emitting 23-24 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Bac said under the plan, Viet Nam would strive to increase the use of non-baked construction materials to 23-25 per cent by 2015 and 30-40 per cent by 2020. Last year, the use of non-baked materials was about 8-8.5 per cent.

Since non-baked building materials are much lighter than normal bricks, their use can help reduce the cost of building foundations, Bac said.

From 2011 onwards, construction works having more than nine floors are required to use at least 30 per cent of non-baked materials and amount of non-baked material must be below 1,000kg per cubic metres.

Bac said that in order to achieve this target, the Government should create favourable conditions like lower taxes and preferential loans for investors to use and produce non-baked materials.

Moreover, Viet Nam should apply advanced technology to produce non-baked materials using a significant portion of industrial waste, he said.

The country should also invest in domestic manufacturing of equipment used to produce non-baked construction materials, Bac added.

He called for stronger awareness campaigns for the use of non-baked materials, reaching out to local authorities, businesses and citizens. This would promote sustainable development of the construction materials industry, he said.

The seminar was attended by several building materials and construction technology suppliers who presented new and modern equipment that met environmental standards and could achieve high economic efficiency.

These included the Environment and Energy Technology Joint Stock Co that produces non-baked bricks from soil and waste and the GMC Ltd Co that introduced the Nano Diamond Fusion technology for protecting glasses, aluminum and metals.

The seminar was organised by the IEC Joint Stock Co in collaboration with the Department of Construction Materials. — VNS

Tags: Vietnam Construction, Vietnam construction material industry