Economy & Market

March against asbestos

Published

7 years ago

January 6, 2019

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Though its use is banned in most countries, the asbestos industry continues to thrive at the cost of putting millions of people at risk.

Asbestos has an uncanny habit of repeatedly making headlines. Recently, the Drug Controller General of India issued a show cause notice to Johnson & Johnson for its alleged use of asbestos in its talcum powder. In February this year, authorities imposed a fine of more than $40,000 after asbestos was found in the construction of a school in Michigan, usa. In New Zealand, a maternity home was demolished in March in Taupo District Council after officials detected asbestos materials. Asbestos has been used for different purposes since prehistoric times, but today the campaign against its use is building up, as exposure can lead to a wide range of diseases. When asbestos materials are damaged or broken during processing, the tiny fibres become airborne and can be easily inhaled at a significant rate. Once inhaled, asbestos fibres lodge in the lining of the throat, lung, or stomach, causing cells to mutate and become cancerous.

Well-documented effects
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 125 million people are directly exposed to asbestos in their workplace annually. More than one million workers die each year from an asbestos-related disease. In 2004, asbestos-related diseases such as lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis from occupational exposure resulted in more than 1.5 million Disability Adjusted Life Years.

That’s why 60 countries have banned the use of this toxic material. Though the Supreme Court of India banned its use on January 21, 2011, it is still being widely used across India. The country uses about 3,50,000 tonnes of asbestos annually and the industry is growing by 12 per cent annually. More than 50 factories use chrysotile, also known as white asbestos, as an ingredient in cement roofing sheets, wall panels, pipes and other products. Asbestos deposits are found in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Manipur. Workers at cement factories in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Coimbatore and Mumbai are suffering from the lethal effects of asbestos. In these factories, the prevalence of asbestosis varies between 3 per cent and 5 per cent. Worse, India continues to import asbestos to be used in cement roofing sheets, cement piping, friction materials, textiles, insulation and even railways and armed forces. Moreover, asbestos products carry no health warning labels and trade unions have no mandate to prevent asbestos-related disease at workplaces. In fact, asbestos related-diseases are never diagnosed but simply labelled as tuberculosis or bronchitis. As long as the state governments and Union Territories have no mechanism to prove that lung cancer deaths and other severe conditions are being caused by asbestos exposure, the Indian asbestos industry could not care less about global efforts to completely eliminate this deadly material.

Trials continue
Russia remains the world’s largest producer of asbestos. The major mines are situated in Asbest, a city located on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains, once known as the "dying city" due to its high rate of lung cancer and other asbestos-related conditions. Russia provides most of the asbestos to the world market, including for the US.

Ironically, its use is legal in the US. "By allowing asbestos to remain legal, the Trump administration would be responsible for the flood of asbestos imports from Russia and other countries into the US, as well as the wave of illnesses and deaths that will continue for years to come," says Linda Reinstein, CEO and Co-Founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, a non-profit based in California, USA. The legal claims for injuries from asbestos exposure in the US involve more plaintiffs, more defendants and higher costs than any other type of personal injury litigation. By the beginning of 2001, about 6,00,000 individuals had filed lawsuits against more than 6,000 defendants. The total amount that defendants and insurers have spent on resolving claims, including legal costs, is estimated to be $54 billion. The victims say they suffer from lung problems caused by repeated exposure to asbestos on their jobs.

The cases with the greatest potential liability involve mesothelioma and lung cancer. How much money can be awarded in a lawsuit depends on many factors, such as the medical evidence that confirms the diagnosis, the degree of injury, the actual and potential losses, and the financial resources of the company liable for the asbestos exposure.

Since the 1980s and continuing through the present, a number of companies who were defendants in asbestos litigation quickly sought to limit their losses by filing for bankruptcy protection. Specifically, this is a legal process which allows a company to re-organise in a bankruptcy proceeding, put money aside for present and future asbestos liabilities, and, then exit bankruptcy and continue to do business. For instance, Johns-Manville declared bankruptcy decades ago and set up a bankruptcy trust to pay victims of asbestos-related diseases. Soon the company exited bankruptcy and continued to operate as a business with products that can be seen in building supply stores across the country.

About ther auther Gregory A Cade is the principal attorney at US-based Environmental Litigation Group, PC, a law firm focused on asbestos exposure cases, toxic exposure cases and environmental cases)

(This article was first published in Down To Earth’s print edition dated April 1-15, 2019)

Economy & Market

TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race

Published

3 days ago

April 27, 2026

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Jignesh Kundaria, Director and CEO, Fornnax Technology

India is simultaneously grappling with two crises: a mounting waste emergency and an urgent need to decarbonise its most carbon-intensive industries. The cement sector, the second-largest in the world and the backbone of the nation’s infrastructure ambitions, sits at the centre of both. It consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, and it has the technical capacity to consume something else entirely: the waste our cities cannot get rid of.

According to CPCB and NITI Aayog projections, India generates approximately 62.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with that figure expected to reach 165 million tonnes by 2030. Much of this waste is energy-rich and non-recyclable. At the same time, cement kilns operate at material temperatures of approximately 1,450 degrees Celsius, with gas temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees. This high-temperature environment is ideal for co-processing, ensuring the complete thermal destruction of organic compounds without generating toxic residues. The physics are in our favour. The infrastructure is not.

Pre-processing is not the support act for co-processing. It is the main event. Get the particle size wrong, get the moisture wrong, get the calorific value wrong and your kiln thermal stability will suffer the consequences.

The Regulatory Push Is Real

The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2026 mandate that cement plants progressively replace solid fossil fuels with Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), starting at a 5 per cent baseline and scaling to 15 per cent within six years. NITI Aayog’s 2026 Roadmap for Cement Sector Decarbonisation targets 20 to 25 per cent Thermal Substitution Rate (TSR) by 2030. Beyond compliance, every tonne of coal replaced by RDF generates measurable carbon reductions which is monetisable under India’s emerging Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS). TSR is no longer a sustainability metric. It is a financial lever.

Yet our own field assessments across multiple Indian cement plants reveal a sobering reality: the primary barrier to scaling AFR adoption is not waste availability. It is the fragmented and under-engineered pre-processing ecosystem that sits between the waste and the kiln.

Why Indian Waste Is a Different Engineering Problem

Indian municipal solid waste is not the material that imported shredding equipment was designed for. Our waste streams frequently exceed 40 per cent to 50 per cent moisture content, particularly during monsoon cycles, saturated with abrasive inerts including sand, glass, and stone. Plants relying on imported OEM equipment face months of downtime awaiting proprietary spare parts. Machines built for segregated, low-moisture waste fail quickly and disrupt the entire pre-processing operation in Indian conditions.

The two most common failures we observe are what I call the biting teeth problem and the chewing teeth problem. Plants relying solely on a primary shredder reduce bulk waste to large fractions, but the output remains too coarse for stable kiln combustion. Others attempt to use a secondary shredder as a standalone unit without a primary stage to pre-size the feed, leading to catastrophic mechanical failure. When both stages are present but mismatched in throughput capacity, the system becomes a bottleneck. Achieving the 40 to 70 tonnes per hour required for meaningful coal displacement demands a precisely coordinated two-stage process.

Engineering a Made-in-India Answer

At Fornnax, our response to these challenges is grounded in one principle: Indian waste demands Indian engineering. Our systems are built around feedstock homogeneity, the holy grail of kiln stability. Consistent particle size and predictable calorific value are the foundation of stable kiln combustion. Without them, no TSR target is achievable at scale.

Our SR-MAX2500 Dual Shaft Primary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive) processes raw, baled, or loosely mixed MSW, C&I waste, bulky waste, and plastics, reducing them to approximately 150 mm fractions at throughputs of up to 40 tonnes per hour. The R-MAX 3300 Single Shaft Secondary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive), introduced in 2025, takes that primary output and produces RDF fractions in the 30 to 80 mm range at up to 30 tonnes per hour, specifically optimised for consistent kiln feeding. We have also introduced electric drive configurations under the SR-100 HD series, with capacities between 5 and 40 tonnes per hour, already operational at a leading Indian waste-processing facility.

Looking ahead, Fornnax is expanding its portfolio with the upcoming SR-MAX3600 Hydraulic Drive primary shredder at up to 70 tonnes per hour and the R-MAX2100 Hydraulic drive secondary shredder at up to 20 tonnes per hour, designed specifically for the large-scale throughput that higher TSR ambitions require.

The Investment Case Is Now

The 2070 Net-Zero target is not a distant goal for India’s cement sector. It starts today, with decisions being made on the plant floor.

The SWM Rules 2026 are already in effect, requiring cement plants to replace coal with RDF. Carbon credit markets are opening up, and coal prices are not going to get cheaper. Every tonne of coal a cement plant replaces with waste-derived fuel saves money on one side and generates carbon credit revenue on the other. Pre-processing infrastructure is no longer just a compliance requirement. It is a business investment with a measurable return.

The good news is that nothing is missing. The technology works. The waste is available in every Indian city. The government has provided the policy direction. The only thing standing between where the industry is today and where it needs to be is the commitment to build the right infrastructure.

The cement companies that move now will not just meet the regulations. They will be ahead of every competitor that waits.

About The Author

Jignesh Kundaria is the Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology. Over an experience spanning more than two decades in the recycling industry, he has established himself as one of India’s foremost voices on waste-to-fuel technology and alternative fuel infrastructure.

Concrete

WCA Welcomes SiloConnect as associate corporate member

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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The World Cement Association (WCA) has announced SiloConnect as its newest associate corporate member, expanding its network of technology providers supporting digitalisation in the cement industry. SiloConnect offers smart sensor technology that provides real-time visibility of cement inventory levels at customer silos, enabling producers to monitor stock remotely and plan deliveries more efficiently. The solution helps companies move from reactive to proactive logistics, improving delivery planning, operational efficiency and safety by reducing manual inspections. The technology is already used by major cement producers such as Holcim, Cemex and Heidelberg Materials and is deployed across more than 30 countries worldwide.

Concrete

TotalEnergies and Holcim Launch Floating Solar Plant in Belgium

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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TotalEnergies and Holcim have commissioned a floating solar power plant in Obourg, Belgium, built on a rehabilitated former chalk quarry that has been converted into a lake. The project has a generation capacity of 31 MW and produces around 30 GWh of renewable electricity annually, which will be used to power Holcim’s nearby industrial operations. The project is currently the largest floating solar installation in Europe dedicated entirely to industrial self-consumption. To ensure minimal impact on the surrounding landscape, more than 700 metres of horizontal directional drilling were used to connect the solar installation to the electrical substation. The project reflects ongoing collaboration between the two companies to support industrial decarbonisation through renewable energy solutions and innovative infrastructure development.