Architect Yatin Pandya Recycling Domestic Waste into Building Components

Non-polluting environment, economic empowerment and affordable built forms are the three key dimensions of this initiative. The project is an outcome of over three years of empirical research, with the goal of effectively converting municipal waste from the domestic sector into functional building components. First hand experiments and onsite explorations have led to the development of innovative building components that use waste, simple hand- operated tools and local resources and know-how.

Ar. Yatin Pandya, FOOTPRINTS E.A.R.T.H., Ahmedabad

The project also demonstrates that building can become an economic activity, empowering the poor. It shows potential of becoming a cottage industry for economic self-reliance and possibilities to improve the quality of their homes using the affordable alternative building components. Manavsadhna activity centre and the crèche are located amidst one of the largest squatter settlements of Ahmedabad.

The campus is built as a live demonstration for the application of recycled waste as affordable, aesthetically pleasing and efficient building components. The products developed for this project, which incorporate municipal/ domestic waste and are prepared with simple hand operated tools, and produced partly through local help of the end users, are demonstrated in the walls, roofs/slabs, doors and windows.

There are six types of materials and techniques used in the making of the walls. These include: Cement bonded fly ash bricks, Mould-compressed bricks made from landfill site waste residue, stabilized Soil blocks, recycled Glass bottles, recycled Plastic bottles filled with ash and waste residue, and vegetable crate wood panelling in the inner partition walls.

 “This project also demonstrates that building can become an economic activity, empowering the poor. The project has ably demonstrated application of nearly twenty types of recycled waste. These applications cover the alternative components for Roofing, flooring, walling as well as fenestrations. While the waste ranges from Fly ash of the thermal plant to dump fill site garbage hip to wooden crate or even plastic bottles or the glass.” 

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