The air in Mumbai, India, is so polluted that officials have threatened to fine developers up to $25,000 if they don't do something about it.
One architect's solution: Olle Pods, pre-fabricated walls made of calcium silicate panels and filled with mineral wool, the Indian Express reports.
The idea behind Olle Pods is to replace concrete, which can contain up to 30% of its content in the form of powder when cut into desired shapes.
And that powder contains calcium carbonate and silica that lines lungs and decreases their capacity to filter air, causing pulmonary diseases.
"We hope this creates a chain that quells the effects of construction," says architect Lavina Rodrigues, who invented Olle Pods while working with the Navy.
Another architect, Keith Menon, has built a resort in Goa, India, using chira stone mined from the property itself.
"We dug the ground using techniques that would not crack the stone, so that we were able to get large slabs that could be assembled by binding," Menon tells the Indian Express.
"As a result, air pollution was reduced by 30% [as this reduced use of cement and concrete as well as cutting out of marble from mountains and transporting it to site]."
He adds that the
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Ganesh Natarajan is the Founder and Chairman of 5FWorld, a new platform for funding and developing start-ups, social enterprises and the skills eco-system in India. In the past two decades, he has built two of India’s high-growth software services companies – Aptech and Zensar – almost from scratch to global success.