Hummeltorp intends to participate in projects together with the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency to improve waste management

Sweden's total climate impact, from construction processes alone, amounts to ten million tons of carbon dioxide per year. This is as much as all passenger cars in Sweden emit in a year, and it is more than all trucks and buses combined emit in a year. Extracted virgin non-renewable aggregate materials, in Sweden alone, correspond to more than the weight of the Globe 2200 times over every year. At least half of this amount could instead be replaced with recycled aggregate from excavation waste.

To increase the recycling of excavated material, the availability of data on waste and waste management should be improved. There is a great need for traceability as part of a more resource-efficient circular economy. Digital product passports will soon be a requirement for all products on the European market and the waste sector will need to consider how traceability requirements will affect the industry.

Digitalization is a prerequisite for effective traceability and companies in the construction industry have everything to gain from participating in developing smart solutions. Hummeltorp now intends to participate in a project together with the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the state research institute RISE and the strategic innovation program PiiA (Process Industrial IT & Automation) to improve waste management and to create traceability along the entire value chain – from the raw materials industry to the waste sector and back again. The goal of the project is, among other things, to develop methods and tools that can contribute to traceability solutions, clarify waste flows and to establish broad collaboration between actors such as national authorities, regulatory authorities and the industry.

The effects of climate change are clearer than ever and recently the IVL Swedish Environmental Institute released a report showing that increased recycling of excavated materials from construction processes has major environmental benefits. Sweden is considered one of the world's greenest economies, yet only about five percent of excavated materials in Sweden are recycled. It's time to change that – that's why Hummeltorp intends to assist the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in the project and we want to encourage other players in systems development, data analysis, the building materials industry, the rock materials industry, the recycling industry and the construction industry to do the same.