Amanda Åkerberg joined Ragn-Sells while getting her master's degree. A decade later, she's pursuing a PhD – and her role as project manager for an effort to increase circularity through resource utilisation and transport efficiency is part of her doctoral research.
Åkerberg says her interest in circularity was initially sparked as an undergrad. Although her product development courses only briefly touched on concepts like “Cradle-to-Cradle”, enough was kindled to lead her to a master’s programme with a speciality in sustainable technology at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
– I wanted to try to understand what happens at the end of a product’s lifecycle and if we could do anything about that, Åkerberg recalls. I wanted to find new circular solutions and learn how to make something better out of what we call waste.
In 2013, she applied to be one of the first Ragn-Sells summer trainees. It was during Åkerberg’s fourth year at KTH, and there was no better opportunity to gain more of an understanding of waste. Then, as part of the interview process, all the applicants were given an assignment: “Describe what sustainability is.”
– That gave me a good first impression, like: ‘Wow, this company is on to something. Not only do I get to learn about waste, but they're also talking about sustainability!’
A Ragn-Sells career born in academia
After the summer trainee programme ended, Åkerberg did research for her master’s thesis at what is now Ragn-Sells Recycling’s city services department. She joined Ragn-Sells full-time when she received her degree, first as part of city logistics solutions in commercial buildings and then in delivery coordination of multi-site solutions. More recently, she was a project manager in business information and then business development.
Throughout much of that time, however, Åkerberg felt a pull to return to academia in some way. She’d eventually get the opportunity to go back for a PhD in the spring of 2023 when Ragn-Sells became the coordinating organisation for a complex research project focused on circular construction logistics.
BÖRjA is a two-year project funded by the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova and featuring 23 total partners from academia and construction-related industries. Its purpose is to provide complete logistical solutions and scenarios that can enable the circular flow of construction materials at scale, and thus help move the entire sector towards circularity.
By looking at planning, execution, and reporting in three categories of construction (new build, renovation, and demolition), the BÖRjA team aims to identify how best to facilitate material flows that are both circular and scalable. They focus on methods for better-utilising resources and transporting more efficiently but also examine potential policy updates and new business models.
“We all have different keys, but we might not have the locks that fit those keys.”
As the project manager for BÖRjA, Åkerberg coordinates activities as well as overall administration. And the role has come with an invaluable overview of the needs and challenges of implementing circular solutions in the construction industry.
– You need to figure out where to make changes and how those changes affect the system at large so you don't end up doing something which then creates issues somewhere else, i.e., suboptimisation, she explains.
At the heart of it all, there’s the logistical challenge of moving materials across organisational boundaries – the defined scope within which a company or industry player chooses to operate – which can impair the flow of information necessary to supply secondary materials.
– We all have different keys, but we might not have the locks that fit those keys. We can help each other. But in order to do so, we need to figure out where all those keys fit, explains Åkerberg
