Earlier this year Combient Pure started with Vasakronan, ASSA ABLOY, KONE and Swegon Circularity Development Program to drive the circularity within technical building products. The first Sprint, Understanding the Customer, focused on mapping out the customers’ and other stakeholders’ expectations and needs regarding circularity and circular products. During the Sprint, the participating companies had, among others, speed-dating sessions with the stakeholders from the value chain. As guest stakeholders in the Sprint, we had NCC, the construction and property developer company and Bengt Dahlgren, the technical consultancy, sparring with the Program participants.
Vasakronan’s Claire Mirjolet shares the background behind Vasakronan’s circularity ambitions.
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We consume more resources than the planet can provide. Even though we in Nordics have a high level of environmental awareness, we still live as though we had four planets at our disposal. This means that the ecological resources that the earth can generate in one year are consumed within three months.
There’s a great deal of work to be done to ensure we’re not taking resources from future generations. Circularity is one of the most important measures in this regard and according to Circularity Gap Report Sweden 2022, e.g. Sweden is 3.4% circular. This means that the majority of the resources we use to meet our needs are coming from virgin sources.
Vasakronan works to reduce our climate impact as well as to increase the circularity of the material flows in our projects.
One of our sustainability targets is to build entirely with renewable, reused or recycled material by 2030. This is a very ambitious target and we’re already planning a pilot project to investigate the necessary conditions for meeting it.
In terms of construction, for example, we could use wooden frames for buildings. There are also solutions for a lot of construction products, such as reusing carpet tiles, interior walls, glazed partitions, doors, facade materials and suspended ceiling tiles. In some projects, we’ve been able to reuse items like ventilation ducts, cable ladders, sanitary ware and lighting, but it remains a challenge to find renewable, reused or recycled products for more technical construction products such as air handling units, chilled beams, lifts and automatic doors.
Many things are possible today, but not everything. The limits regarding certain technical construction products is why our pilot project currently lacks vital elements for reaching our target of 100% renewable, reused or recycled material.
To accelerate the development of circular installation products, Vasakronan has launched a programme together with Assa Abloy, Kone and Swegon. The development programme is led by Combient Pure.
It’s a way to accelerate the necessary development that all industries need to go through, and for us to reach our targets we need to work together with all of our suppliers and industry partners. Our stance is clear. Those who are already updating their business model to become circular will have a significant competitive advantage and better opportunity to survive as a company.
- Claire Mirjolet, Project Leader, Sustainability at Vasakronan