CSIR and SINTEF Hold India-Norway Waste to Resource Dialogue

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) joined Norway's SINTEF and the Research Council of Norway for the India-Norway Dialogue on Waste to Resource Solutions in the Cement and Construction Sector. The meeting was held on 10 November 2026 at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi, and the Ministry of Science and Technology set out its outcome the next day.

Who took part

Scientists from CSIR laboratories sat with SINTEF researchers, officials from regulatory authorities and representatives of the cement and construction industries. Prof. S. K. Singh of CSIR-CBRI delivered the welcome address. The opening session was addressed by Dr. Rama Swami Bansal, Head of ISTAD at CSIR Headquarters, Dr. Arvinn Gadgil of the Royal Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi, Dr. Kare Helge Karstensen, Chief Scientist at SINTEF, and Prof. R. Pradeep Kumar, Director of CSIR-CBRI.

The Green Strategic Partnership behind it

India and Norway raised their relationship to a Green Strategic Partnership when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Norway in May, and circular economy, clean technology and research sit at the centre of it. Mr. Modi and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store set that course, and this dialogue carried it into one industry.

Turning industrial waste into building material

Prof. Pradeep Kumar spoke of the shift from a linear economy to a circular one and of the need to treat building and industrial waste as a resource. Delegates examined uses for construction and demolition (C&D) waste, steel slag, fly ash and red mud, along with the hurdles of processing technology, standardisation, economic viability and market acceptance. CSIR-CRRI and CSIR-AMPRI showed their work on fly ash, copper slag, red mud, plastic waste and steel grit in road building, geopolymer concrete and specialised aggregates.

Destroying hazardous waste in cement kilns

A technical session on the safe destruction of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and hazardous waste was led by Dr. Karstensen with Dr. Ramesh Kumar, Chief Scientist at CSIR-NEERI. It weighed cement kiln co-processing, in which hazardous organic matter such as DDT and material contaminated with PCB is destroyed at controlled high temperature while waste-derived fuel replaces fossil fuel. CSIR-NEERI described India's National Implementation Plan under its Stockholm Convention commitments, the 2025 CDW Rules and the inventory of legacy POPs. Dr. Christian John Engelsen of SINTEF led a separate session on recycling C&D waste, covering recycled aggregate products, mobile recycling units and ways of removing impurities.

What the two sides agreed to pursue

The dialogue listed priorities for the years ahead: two to three joint India-Norway research proposals, pilot-scale demonstration projects for hazardous waste treatment, technical guidelines for disposing of DDT and PCB contaminated waste, better waste-derived construction materials and stronger industry-academia partnerships.