Construction innovation draws kudos from environ minister

Environment and forest minister Anwar Hossain Manju on Sunday heaped praise on entrepreneurs for innovating environment friendly construction materials to cope up with the changing needs of the country's booming building industry.
Speaking at a seminar, the minister said the issues of climate change and rise of sea level water are now being discussed across the globe.
He said billions of dollars are required to tackle the menace of climate change that threatens to Bangladesh economy and its future.
"We should work without each other of responsible global warming and climate change," he told the seminar.
Concord Group, a leading construction group, organised the seminar on 'Using environment friendly construction materials in Bangladesh' at a city hotel.
Concord Group (CG) chairman SM Kamaluddin was presiding over the seminar where Dr. Eng. M. Shamim Z. Bosunia, president Institute of Engineers, Bangladesh, Professor Nazrul Islam, former chairman of University Grant Commission of Bangladesh were special guests.
Rapid urbanisation has caused a loss of almost 2.67 million acres of land between 1972 and 2009, Saleh Mustafa Kamal, an environment consultant, said while presenting a keynote paper at the seminar.  
"In recent years, we've witnessed fast disappearance of agricultural land, which is principally attributed to homesteads and infrastructure requirement," he said.
Urbanisation has also created demand for modern construction materials and for example, 17.2 million bricks were produced in 2011, he said. But brick burning required 45 million tons in the same year, causing air pollution and emitting 9.8 million tons of carbon.
Dr. Eng. M. Shamim Z. Bosunia in his speech said due to global warming and massive urbanization the overall construction concept has been changed.
He said it is urgent to use renewable energy and environment friendly construction materials that would save people from pollution and reduce damage caused by natural disasters.
The CG chairman said Concord has always played a pioneering role in implementing new technologies and ideas. What Concord adopted became the standard in time.
He said Concord is pioneer in the field of ready mix concrete construction materials and other huge technological construction materials.
Shahriar Kamal, deputy managing director of the Concord group in his welcome speech said they were the first company to set up concrete block plants in Bangladesh and now has four fully automated plants that manufacture load-bearing block, hollow block, hollow brick, solid block, paving block and a host of other concrete products.