I am from Kerala, in India. The amount of damage the illegal sand-mining done here in rivers is pretty alarming.
I think we should adopt living in smaller houses, which are built out of locally available materials, instead of cement concrete. As far as I know, concrete buildings do not have a lifetime exceeding 40 years, where as older construction techniques do give us longer lasting buildings.
Local concrete used in India include a mixture of slaked lime, honey, water chestnuts, rice husk etc. - e.g. [1] Seems to last a couple of centuries, at least.
Interesting - comments elsewhere here are disparaging about wood and laminates due to perceptions about longevity, while the stuff concrete is replacing in India was hardly short lived.
I think we should adopt living in smaller houses, which are built out of locally available materials, instead of cement concrete. As far as I know, concrete buildings do not have a lifetime exceeding 40 years, where as older construction techniques do give us longer lasting buildings.
Local concrete used in India include a mixture of slaked lime, honey, water chestnuts, rice husk etc. - e.g. [1] Seems to last a couple of centuries, at least.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bara_Imambara#Building_composi...