The building industry accounts for about a fifth of Sweden’s total climate emissions. Reducing these is crucial if we are to meet national climate targets. One way forward is recycling. And recycling is not only about sustainability, it is also an opportunity to strengthen our national resilience, writes Andreas Örje Wellstam, CEO of Swegon Group.
Published at di.se 2025-08-15 (Swedish)
The industry can, and wants to, contribute
Swedish businesses are both able and willing to help achieve our climate goals and strengthen national resilience. What is needed are the right tools to get the job done.
The building sector is responsible for around 20% of Sweden’s climate emissions. Reducing these is essential if we are to reach our national climate targets, and recycling is an important part of the solution. Moreover, recycling is not only a matter of sustainability, it also has the potential to make Sweden more resilient.
Sustainability still seen as a burden
For many, especially within business, sustainability is still seen as a burden. Investments must be made, processes audited and reports submitted to various authorities. The benefits may be hard to see in the short term, even if most recognise the necessity of change.
At Swegon, where we provide solutions for ventilation, heating and air conditioning (HVAC), recycling has long been a difficult challenge. The construction sector is almost entirely structured around new-build. For decades, property development has been driven by the idea of building new and more functional. Introducing something already used, even if fully operational, has often been met with scepticism from clients. Building regulations, insurance requirements and occupational health and safety standards also tend to favour new products and new-build projects.
Recycling materials instead of products
An alternative direction is to recycle construction products as components or raw materials. There are many good initiatives in this area. For example, the industry association Byggmaterialindustrierna is leading a major cross-industry project to increase the circular use of building materials.
The risk, however, is that even though progress is being made, it is moving too slow. Creating viable business models where companies can clearly see the value of recycling and reuse continues to be a major challenge.
A question of national resilience
One way to impact both the value and the pace of circularity is to recognise what it contributes to national resilience. Reusing resources, raw materials and products supports more secure local supply. Domestic production capacity is also an important factor.
Buildings contain vast amounts of materials. Failing to recover these in renovation or demolition projects is a waste. From our perspective, HVAC solutions, this means large volumes of metal which, if not reused, end up in landfill. Often property owners lack the knowledge of how to manage a solution that has been in place for 15–20 years, and they rarely have a financial incentive to enable reuse.
Shared methods needed
At Swegon, as in many other companies, routines already exist for reusing our own systems and solutions. But the real impact at a societal level will only come once there is a shared methodology across industries and sectors. By investing in large-scale recycling and reuse, society can secure access to materials as part of building national resilience. Concretely, this could mean:
- Minimum requirements for reuse in public procurement.
- Financial incentives, such as tax reliefs for projects that achieve a certain proportion of reuse and for developers who produce reuse declarations.
- Technical standards, developed by Boverket or SIS*, that ensure the quality of reused materials and encourage the use.
Time to use what’s already there
At a time when national resilience is high on the agenda and many are considering the future of our raw material supply, it should be obvious to make sure to use the materials already available here in Sweden.
Swedish businesses are both able and willing to help achieve our climate goals and strengthen our national resilience. What we ask for are the tools to get the job done.
Andreas Örje Wellstam, CEO Swegon Group
* Boverket and SIS are Swedish regulations and standards in the building sector
