Hano​i (VNA) - Province and city authorities have been told to stopinvestment in fired clay brick production and to prioritise investment in otherenvironmentally friendly construction materials.

The orderwas one of the highlights of a recent official paper issued by Deputy PrimeMinister Trinh Dinh Dung. The paper followed a month of study and theconsideration of feedback at a national conference on the development ofconstruction materials held in mid-December.

It isestimated that in 2020, Vietnam could need as many as 42 billion bricksfor construction works. In the next 10 years, the total output could reach 330billion clay bricks, requiring up to 40 million tonnes of coal to process. Thebrick production will release into the atmosphere 148 tonnes of green housegases amongst other pollutants. The unfired counterpart, however, don’t havesuch a large environmental footprint, as they don’t require the use of naturalclay or burning of fossil fuels.

Vietnam’srapid economic growth continues to generate enormous demands forinfrastructure. The cost of construction materials alone takes up 30-50 percentof the total budget for infrastructure investment. There are also the hiddencosts stemming from the environmental impacts at every step of the materials’‘life cycle’: mineral mining, manufacturing, construction, use and demolition.

Therefore,“developing sustainable material construction will bring beneficialcontributions to socio-economic development,” the paper says.

The neworder to contain the expansion of conventional fired bricks comes seven yearsafter a programme (Decision No 567/QĐ-TTg) aiming at encouraging the productionand use of unfired materials was launched in 2010 with a vision towards 2020.

Theprogramme aimed to substitute at least 20-25 percent of fired clay materialswith unfired variants by 2015 and 30-40 percent by 2020. The constructionministry’s data showed that in 2017, the country produced some seven billionstandardised unfired bricks, or 28 percent of the total bricks produced.

While thefirst-phase target was achieved, construction authorities said the lattertarget might be elusive for several reasons. The unfired bricks are relativelymore expensive, the public retains a cautious attitude towards new products andenforcement is weak.

Pham VanBac, head of construction materials department under the Ministry ofConstruction, said that the raw materials to produce unfired bricks are ash,slag, plaster, stones and other industrial and construction wastes, which areall easily accessible due to the country’s ongoing modernisation andindustrialisation process.

Towardsthe end of 2017, 40 million tonnes of ash and flue-gas desulfurisation (FGD), abyproduct of the desulphurization process in coal burning plants, remainunhandled in the country. Another 15 million tonnes are expected to be added tothis figure annually. But expanding unfired brick production could chip away atthe waste.

“If thisenormous amount of waste is not properly handled, it will be a burden on theenvironment as vast tracts of land would be needed to store [it]. However, thiswaste would be a boon to the production of unfired bricks. Two birds with onestone,” Nguyen Minh Tuan, deputy general director of Viglacera, aState-controlled construction materials company that has received praise fromthe government for its efforts in pioneering unfired materials, told Thoibao tai chinh Vietnam online newspaper.

Deputy PMTrinh Dinh Dung has asked all relevant ministries and State agencies tothoroughly review the implementation of the 2010 programme and to makeappropriate amendments to State management regulations to help the programmeachieve its targets.

TheMinistry of Construction has been told to work with the Ministry of Science andTechnology in develop new building materials that are affordable, high qualityand “green, consistent with climate change adaptation policies.”

Deputy PMDung also ordered environment agencies to boost inspection and monitoring ofmineral extraction, especially sand mining near estuaries, an activity that hasdrawn public criticism over its environmental impacts.

Thereport also asks for the quick completion of several plans to be submitted tothe Prime Minister. The plans include one on developing the cement productionindustry in Vietnam, an accompanying master plan on surveying, processing andusing mineral natural resources to produce cement, and a project to developconstruction materials for use in coastal and island areas.

TheMinistry of Finance shall review and amend policies on natural resource taxes,export taxes and environment protection fees to ensure the sustainabledevelopment of construction materials; to craft incentives to encouragebusinesses to reduce the use of mineral resources and instead use materialsfrom waste and new green materials.-VNA