3. Good examples from the field in the Nordics

In the Nordic countries there are several companies focusing on recycling or reusing material and items from the construction and demolition sector. A few of them are described below. These case examples have been chosen as they represent a variation of materials as well as a variation of reusing and recycling of the materials. The examples represent actors that have recycling, reusing and recovering of construction and demolition material as part of their business idea and who do this on a regular basis rather than single projects. Some of the exemplified actors operate in several of the Nordic countries but are only described for one of the countries to avoid too much of repetition.

NÆSTE is a company that builds architect-designed wooden sheds in recycled materials. NÆSTE collaborates with the waste management company RGS Nordic, which finds and prepares high-quality wood waste (e.g., heartwood) from demolitions to NÆSTE. In the coming years, NÆSTE expects to have a production of sheds with a total annual material consumption of 700 tons of wood waste. Within the next three years this is expected to rise 3.500 tons of wood waste. By using handpicked material of high quality, a long durability of the sheds is ensured, minimum 30 years, according to a study from the Danish Technological Institute.

The sheds are easy to maintain and do not require painting or oiling. By using recycled wood, NÆSTEs wooden sheds score points in DGNB construction and can be used in buildings where environmentally conscious material choices are required. The wooden sheds are labelled with the FSC label "FSC Recycled" which is a guarantee that the sheds are built from 100% recycled materials.

The building system consists of recycled rafter timber that is prefabricated at a construction factory with recycled or sorted industrial materials (e.g., terrace boards) as facade cladding. The building module system is put on foundation screws, which allows for dismantling and subsequent reuse. As a roofing material, red bricks, slate, as well as "green" sedum or dry meadow roofs are used. An integrated solar roof can also be made from recycled solar cells, which can function as a local energy generator so that no power cables must be drawn to the shed. NÆSTE delivers the construction system throughout Denmark and collaborates with both nationwide and local contractors on fast and efficient installation on site.

Gamle Mursten is a company that specializes in cleaning used bricks that can be disassembled from old houses in demolition and renovation projects.

Gamle Mursten has developed a patented technology where they clean old bricks mechanically using vibration technology that rattles off the mortar. This means that neither water nor chemicals are involved in the process. After cleaning, the company sorts, and quality check the bricks manually by quality, type and color. The cleaned bricks are then placed on conveyor belts, which guide them to a robot that stacks and packs the bricks according to color and customer wishes.

Gamle Mursten receive bricks exclusively from buildings that are bricked up in lime mortar. These are typically buildings built up to the year 1960. In the 1960s, cement mortar began to be used in masonry. Cement is harder than the brick, which means that the bricks break during cleaning. There are techniques for reusing bricks used with cement-based mortar in the Nordics, see 3.5.2.

Up to 65 percent of the cleaned bricks can be reused directly. The more gently the demolition method used, the higher percentage of reuse. Previously, you had to discard the damaged bricks, but now you cut shells in the thickness of 25 mm from the neat sides of these bricks. This gives a utilization rate of up to 80 percent of the material that the factory receives for cleaning. The company also clean and stack the half stones, called cups, which have often been used in every other shift in older buildings.

The company states that if you introduce requirements for the preparation of resource mappings of buildings and facilities before demolition and renovation and pre-testing of the bricks, it will be possible to identify and reuse a much larger part of the stones that today are just crushed and used for backfilling.

The cleaned bricks are CE marked and tested according to EN 771-1.

Gamle Mursten has a capacity to handle approximately 10.000.000 bricks per year (equivalent to approx. 25.000 tons of bricks). Now the production covers approx. 6% of the market for bricks used for facades in Scandinavia. Within the next couple of years, the capacity is projected to increase to 50.000 tons of bricks per year.

Kronospan is a company that recycles wood waste in the production of particleboard for the construction, furniture, kitchen, and wood industries.

Up to 90 % of the raw material in the production is pure wood waste delivered to recycling sites and collected by waste management companies in connection with construction projects. The rest is thinning wood from Danish forests and offcuts from the wood industry.

Kronospan. 2023. Company web page. Available: https://kronospan-dk.dk/baeredygtighed

The company has an annual consumption of wood waste of approx. 380.000 tons.

Finnish insulation company Finnfoam has developed collection system for insulation plastics (EPS, XPS, PIR, PUR, EPP, EPE and XPE) where cuttings and surplus insulation materials are collected from construction sites in large sacks which are transported back to Finnfoam production plant. Surplus materials can be brought to local hardware store which acts as a collection point for private customers. The company also receives products from other insulation producers. The recycled plastic materials are currently recycled by pre-treating and grounding the material as a filler for FF-Silent roofing insulation products or FF-FRAME assisting frame insulation products.

Currently the company is constructing innovative chemical polystyrene recycling plant in Salo which is supposed to be completed by the end of 2023

Finnfoam. 2023. Company web page. Available: https://finnfoam.fi/

. The company aims to recycle polystyrene fraction (EPS and XPS) from the received insulation waste with chemical recycling after the recycling plant is operational. The remaining fraction is used as a recycled material for various products. The company does not accept insulation waste from demolition sites yet, however, the chemical recycling technology enables also recycling of dirty insulation plastics and the recycling of polystyrene wastes from the demolition sites might be in consideration in the future. 

EcoUp is a Finnish corporate group specialized in insulation manufacturing (ekovilla thermal insulation made from recycled wood fibers) and providing circular solutions for construction wastes, especially insulation wools. The company produces CE marked mineral-wool loose materials from the surplus mineral wool from house construction factories. The group has also developed technology to recycle mineral wools waste (glass and rock wool) from demolition sites to a raw material for example geopolymer concrete or concrete products, such as environmental concrete products, which allows the use of such material.

The company has pilot sized manufacturing line operational with capacity to grind 6000 tons of mineral wool waste a year in one shift

Ecoup. 2023. Company web page. Available: https://ecoup.fi/

. However, the utilization of waste-based products needs extensive quality assurance process. In addition, the current waste and building product legislation is a bit unclear for the recycling of waste-based materials which limits the use of mineral wool waste. Currently the mineral wool waste is possible to use in certain products such as concrete blocks, pavers, and façade elements. The company has possibility to scale-up the technology and capacity if the market for recycled end products increases.

Remeo, a Finnish owned waste management company, which has in 2021 built a new recycling and sorting facility in Vantaa. The facility utilizes novel technology for AI (artificial intelligence) assisted automated sorting of different waste fractions and it is one of the most developed CDW treatment facilities in Finland. The flexibility and machine learning enables higher recovery rate and better quality for different waste materials. With the state-of-the-art technology the facility is also possible to adjust to separate new waste fractions if needed in the future. The facility has capacity to treat of CDW 120 000 tons per year and additional 60 000 t/a capacity for energy waste treatment according to Remeo web page

Remeo. Undated. Article in web page. Available: https://remeo.fi/kiertotalous/tulevaisuuden-kierratyslaitos/

. However, the environmental permit of the facility enables receiving max. 240 000 tons of CDW annually

AVI. 2023. Permit journal number ESAVI/31542/2022. Dated 6.4.2023. Available: https://ylupa.avi.fi/fi-FI/asia/2278869  

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The Finnish Waste Law requires those waste holders including public waste holders, whose need for their municipality’s supplementary waste management services exceeds EUR 2,000 in value to use the Materiaalitori (material marketplace) service. Materiaalitori is a digital platform intended for the professional exchange of waste and production side streams or reusable products from companies and organisations. Materiaalitori also allows searching for and offering related services, such as waste management and specialist services. The requirement helps forming industrial symbioses for reuse and recovery of waste and side streams by providing operators in the field with one meeting place that enables those offering and needing recycled materials and products to find each other. 

Many other innovative companies are working on demolition waste recycling and reusing. For example, GRK, a Finnish infra construction company, has started production of biochar from demolition wood waste. Compared to typical energy use of wood waste, biochar is multi-use product for infra and agricultural use and it acts as a carbon sink

GRK. 2023. Product web page. Available: https://www.grk.fi/palvelut/biohiili/

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Revisol is a Finnish waste management and circular economy company which offers wide variety of waste management services such as waste collection and waste treatment (mechanical separation facility). The company is also specialized in recycling of the windows and doors. The company has separate recycling line for used door and window recycling where all materials (frames, metals, pure glass, and glass with impurities) are separated and directed to energy use or material recycling

Ylijäämävarasto Oy. Undated. Company web page. Available: https://www.ylijaama.fi/

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Suomen Ovimarket Oy/Ylijäämävarasto (surplus stock) has developed a business on surplus construction product market. The company buys surplus construction materials and fixtures from construction sites, wholesalers and bankrupt’s estate and resells them for individuals and building enterprises in online shop (ylijaama.fi) and also in fixed location in Hämeenlinna

Ylijäämävarasto Oy. Undated. Company web page. Available: https://www.ylijaama.fi/

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YIT is Finland’s biggest construction company which operates in housing, facility and infra construction sectors. The company has group level target (>75%)

YIT Group. Undated. Sustainability targets. Available: https://www.yitgroup.com/fi/vastuullisuus/vastuullisuuden-johtaminen

for sorting rate of construction and demolition waste. The company has been in frontline in developing source separation practices in construction and demolition sites together with other waste management companies.

There are several discussions and projects ongoing in Iceland to finding a path for the CDW that usually ends up in landfill. Due to Iceland being of smaller size, there are not many available established facilities working on reuse and recycling of CDW, and the good examples from the field are more based on the various ongoing and planned building and demolition projects in Iceland. One such project was a construction of a new social housing in Reykjavík (Háteigsvegur 59

Lendager. Undated. Form fylgir framboði. https://www.graennibyggd.is/_files/ugd/54e708_80733cb74c564b789844f18b7704350b.pdf

) This included having the flooring in the housing made from waste stone left from the preparation of building cladding from another construction project, used windows installed in the common area, and used insulation wool was used instead of a virgin insulation wool, to name few initiatives during the design and construction of the housing.

For this report, several individuals working with the circular economy in the building and demolition sector in Iceland were contacted and interviewed in order to identify good examples in the field

Personal communications, several actors: VSÓ, Grænni Byggð Ísland, Ríkiskaup, Umhverfisstofnun, Hornsteinn. 2023.

. The interviewees all agreed that the awareness is increasing in the sector, and that there is high motivation and will in minimizing the amount of CDW ending up in landfill or in another disposal.

The holding company Hornsteinn is the parent company of three subsidiaries: BM Vallá (concrete producer), Sementsverksmiðjan (cement importer) and Björgun (aggregate producer)

Personal communications Máney Guðmundsdóttir, Hornsteinn. 2023. 

. Hornsteinn is actively working towards implementing the circular economy in the operations of their daughter companies and have ongoing projects for avoiding generation of waste from production.

Hornsteinn tries to ensure that any leftover concrete from daily operations is utilized, either by being mixed with new concrete or to produce concrete bricks. Due to the time sensitivity of concrete, concrete that has been left over from projects early in the workday can be mixed in with new concrete, but concrete that is left over at the end of the workday is used to produce concrete bricks that can be used in various settings. 

Furthermore, Hornsteinn is actively working on redefining their process for defective paving stones that cannot be sold due to either defect in appearance or quality. For pavings that are faulty in looks, Hornsteinn aims to sell them as a B-product as they have seen an interest amongst some buyers for these types of pavings. For the paving stones that have quality issues, such as leaking, Hornsteinn has been testing them as recycled aggregates in their concrete, that is, replacing 5% of virgin aggregates with crushed paving stones in concrete.

A program where Rockwool products removed from demolition projects can be reused in the production of new rockwool insulation

Rockwool. Website: https://www.rockwool.com/no/radgivning-og-inspirasjon/rockwool-retursystem/ 

. Rockwool is present in all the Nordic countries excluding Iceland.  

Norsk Gjenvinning AS, under contract with Ruteretur AS, collects the insulation windows containing PCB under the EPR scheme from both the municipal reception points and from their own 18 regional reception centres. Norsk Gjenvinning AS separates the glass and the frames. The glass goes to recycling and the frames containing the PCB-sealants are incinerated in high temperature rotary kilns with the breakdown of the PCBs and with recovery of energy. The company handles both Ruteretur and glass outside of the system, i.e., glass free from hazardous materials, as well as other hazardous glass containing chlorinated paraffines. The non-hazardous glass waste is used in e.g., in the production of new insulation of glass wool from Glava

Ruteretur. Website. https://www.ruteretur.no/

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Facility for reception and handling of plaster board/gypsum waste. Delivers recycled gypsum (powder) to plasterboard production from Norgips (Knauf) and Gyproc (Saint- Gobain), which utilises waste gypsum in the production. New West Gypsum recycling is also located in Canada, UK, France, Belgium and Germany

New West Gypsum. Website. https://www.nwgypsum.com/ 

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Tarkett has manufactured floors in Sweden since 1886 and invests a lot of resources in developing products for circularity but also on developing techniques to identify, handle and process installation waste and torn-up floors to then use it as raw material in new floors. Tarkett has two big production facilities in Sweden, one in Hanaskog and one in Ronneby

Tarkett, webbsite. Available: https://proffs.tarkett.se/sv_SE/node/atervinning-av-gamla-plastgolv-4633

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The recycled raw materials consist of fractions such as own production waste, waste from other business, installation spill from floors and old floors. Old floors as recycled raw material is the fraction containing the highest volume of recycled raw material. Currently Tarkett have systems in place to be able to collect and recycle some of our homogeneous vinyl flooring and loose plastic floors as well as textile tiles.

Brukspecialisten is specialized in reusing brick as they consider it to be the construction material with highest potential for reuse. Since they started out as brick producers, they already have good knowledge of the market. They also state that it is of great importance to establish contact with the contractors at an early stage to save the bricks for recycling.

Brukspecialsten. 2023. Available: https://brukspecialisten.se/ and Personal communication Jacob Steen. 2023.

According to the CEO about 90 percent of the invented brick can be reused. After inventing the brick at the demolition site Brukspecialisten establish an inventing protocol and pay a deposit for the brick. By getting control of the product, they can classify it and get it CE-marked, which make it attractive for the buyers.

The company has developed a technique for reusing bricks using cement-based mortar, since lime-based mortar is fairly uncommon in Sweden, compared to e.g., Denmark. The company has worked with this concept for five years and during this period they have experienced a higher demand and understanding for reused brick compared to when they started. They work throughout entire Sweden and have also been involved in single projects in Oslo.

Brukspecialisten has a capacity to handle approximately 2.500.000 brick per year. This is equivalent to approximately 40 - 50.000 square meters facade gathered from demolition brick meant for new facades. The capacity is projected to increase to 5.000. 000 bricks in year 2025. According to the CEO 15.000.000 bricks are thrown away each year at the Swedish market.

There are several marketplaces for reused building materials. These often operate locally and/or on digital platforms. Both public and private marketplaces are found.

Brattöns återbruk is a recycling company that focus on construction goods and building materials from 2012

Brattöns Återbruk, Website. Available: https://www.brattonsaterbruk.se/

. The warehouse is located in Gothenburg but they have customers all over Sweden. During 2022, they sold recycled construction goods and building material corresponding to a climate saving of 195 ton CO₂. There are more recycling companies in Sweden that handles construction goods and building materials as well.

Malmö Återbyggdepå is another company that receives and sells used building materials

Malmö Återbyggsdepå, Website. Available: https://www.malmoabd.se/

. They started their operations in 1998 and since then the demand has grown significantly. About 90 percent of the material they receive come from construction companies and large construction or demolition sites, but they also receive material from private individuals. The range varies from single items to materials in large quantities. The rebuilding depot cleans the bricks and then cuts the bricks into floor tiles. Malmö Återbyggdepå sells recycled bricks, window, tiles, stones & concrete and used doors, among other things.

Norditek business idea consists of helping companies in the construction sector finding a concept and providing the suitable equipment for separating and refining construction and demolition material for on-site sorting. As they provide services all over Sweden, they don’t have stationary facilities but temporary facilities in connection to the construction or demo­lition site. The company has their own production of equipment located in Umeå in Sweden but operates all over the country. According to the interview the key to succeed in recycling material from construction and demolition sector is first to be able to separate materials from each other and then to have a deep knowledge about the different materials.

Norditek. Available: https://norditek.se/atervinning-av-byggavfall/ (2023-08-24) and Personal communication. 2023. Andras Pettersson