How sustainable innovation for the built environment transcends construction

In 2023, the Ragn-Sells Group announced it would focus its development of sustainable solutions within a select few areas of innovation. Among the various fields was “construction”. According to Innovation Manager Lars Nybom, the sector may seem like an odd choice, but any breakthroughs created for it have broad and wide-reaching potential.

22 Oct 2024

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A core part of Nybom’s role is overseeing construction as an area of innovation. At Ragn-Sells, that means leading the efforts and creating the conditions to explore circular building materials.

– We believe that greenhouse gas emissions will be an issue for those producing construction materials, explains Nybom. So, what we're talking about is utilising what’s already processed and somewhat aggregated in the built environment.

A good example of this type of sustainable solution can be seen in the partnership between Ragn-Sells and French-based glass manufacturer Saint-Gobain. Since coming together in 2022, the companies have been reclaiming glass from demolished or renovated buildings to be used in new windows and doors.

– If we reclaim or recycle material, we have to ensure the necessary quality from the demolition or renovation site all the way to the producer. That's basically what we're after, says Nybom.

Decades upon decades of linear material flows

The high carbon footprint of virgin materials combined with a long dependence on a linear economy has resulted in a sector rife with problems that need circular solutions.

– One of the most effective ways of solving a lot of issues is to substitute the feedstock going into production from linear virgin to more sustainable recycled materials. If you look at how much material that’s out there to reclaim, a lot of it is in the built environment, explains Nybom.

Yet recovering materials from building infrastructure isn’t simple. Entrenched policies and practices hinder any effort to fully harvest resources from construction sector waste streams. Large material flows, like those directly from building sites, often mix many different types and include contaminants. Meanwhile, clean and homogeneous material flows are often too small to reach economies of scale.

– People think it's easy. It's super difficult, says Nybom. You're competing against 200 years of consolidation in producing construction materials built on linear economy logic.

"If we reclaim or recycle material, we have to ensure the necessary quality from the demolition or renovation site all the way to the producer."

Lars Nybom, Innovation Manager at Ragn-Sells

Forging partnerships & transferring insights

As Nybom explains, the challenge is gaining an overview of the materials' value chains to pinpoint where sustainable solutions can provide the most benefits. Doing so requires connecting with producers and forging partnerships to learn more about their needs.

It’s a style of innovation that builds new systems and processes with existing infrastructure and capabilities. The most likely solutions include new ways to inventory materials before they become waste — as in still part of a building set for demolition — and data infrastructure that ensures traceability and maximises trust. Nybom admits such components aren’t necessarily technically or scientifically groundbreaking on their own, but points out it can be a different story when they’re combined.

– I would call it “business model innovation,” since we’re exploring novel ways to create, deliver, and capture value, he says. “Ecosystem innovation” is another term that I use a lot these days.

Ultimately, the goal of construction as an area of innovation is to introduce more reclaimed material into the building industry. But there’s another objective that’s more indirect.

According to Nybom, a major reason the Ragn-Sells Group chose to split its development of circular solutions into different areas with different challenges instead of having a single unified approach was to gain a variety of insights into the practicalities of circularity.

– Hopefully, we will learn a lot from this area of innovation and the ways of working will be something that we can do in other areas as well, he says.

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