Construction and Environment

Introduction

We live in society where many infrastructures are needed. So to have a better life, we build the infrastructure that we possibly can. For example, we build accommodation of the people, institutions, industries, business and commercial centres, roads, highway, electricity network, stadiums, airports and so many others. We need to construct those infrastructure to develop our way of living. But while building those structure we are manipulating the natural environment immensely. Building and construction activities world-wide consume three billion tons of raw materials each year or 40% of total global use. No other industries in the world use more materials by weight than construction industry. When we use that much of material for ourselves, we cannot but be conscious about the effect of this on our environment.

Environmental Impacts of Construction

We all know that our environment is getting polluted by us in every single minutes. In this pollution the contribution of construction industry is furious. According to new research by construction blog Bimhow, the construction sector contributes to 23% of air pollution, 50% of the climate change, 40% of the drinking water pollution and 50% of the landfill waters. In separate research by U.S Green Building Council (USGBC), the construction industry account for 40% of worldwide energy usage, with estimations that by 2030 emissions from commercial buildings will grow by 1.8%. Furthermore according to the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), construction activity can significantly change the surface of a land in large part due to clearing of vegetation and excavating which is common in many construction project. According to the agency, the result means the surrounding environment can be heavily polluted, particularly surrounding water pools, which have experienced an increase in pollution as a result of various construction project in recent years. Additionally research by Kleiwerks says that building materials such as concrete, aluminium and steel are directly responsible for large quantity of CO2 emissions due to high contents of embroiled energy content with 9.8 million tons of CO2 generated from the production of 76 million tons of finished concrete in the U.S. The research also says that the construction sector currently practice at reducing pollutants or omissions are massively ineffective and may even generate high level of greenhouse gas pollution. Construction activity consume half of all the resources extracted from nature and account for one-sixth of global freshwater consumption, one quarter of wood consumption and one quarter of global waste, according to the research.

In the other country the number have not got unnoticed. On the other hand the production of the materials that use in construction also has an impact on the environment because huge quantity of the material produced in non-sustainable ways.

Prevention Measures

As we can see, the construction sector is causing more damage to the environment than any other sector, we civil engineers should take steps to minimize the damage as far as possible. We should make people aware of the consequence of unplanned construction and make all the construction friendly to the environment. For this purpose, there are some new rules and technology for us. It is very important to follow those rules while we are doing construction project. As we know there are many chemicals used during construction process, many of which may be quite harmful to both worker and surrounding environment if not handled correctly. There for the environment protection agency (EPA) recommend that we design, install and maintain effective pollution measure during the course of a project to ensure pollutants are discharged correctly and safely with limited impact on the environment. According to EPA rules certain discharges such ass wash water from washout of concrete or other construction material, discharges of fuels, oil are prohibited. Many of this rules will certainly help to limit the bad impact on the environment. There is a process that uses environment friendly materials during the construction process named Building Green can save 250 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually, according to the environmental group lead. Furthermore, according to a new report by Dodge Data and Analytics, green building continue to double in every three years, with 60% of construction project expected to be green by 2018 and roughly 70% of the survey’s respondents citing lower operating cost as the greatest benefit of building green. The increasing popularity of building green among the people has led the EPA to produce a number of initiatives such as

1. Energy star program,

2. Industrial recycling program,

3. EPAs environmentally preferable purchasing program,

There are also other measures taken by the GOVT. and different organizations aimed at improving construction impact in the environment.

CONCLUSION

Construction is compulsory for the development of any society. It is a vary spread sector than any other in case of affecting environment and it is increasing day by day. So the bad impact that it has on environment is also increasing .Nowadays it has become the most talkative issue among the scientist. When we practice any construction activities, we have to be aware of its impact on environment and follow the rules which are made to limit the negative impact of construction on environment. Otherwise there will be a day soon enough when our very existence will be at risk.