SBB is playing a pioneering role in the circular economy and therefore helping to transform Switzerland into a sustainable society and economy.
Many of the industrial goods produced worldwide are made from non-renewable materials and are usually recycled, dumped in landfill or incinerated after being used. This leads to a considerable amount of raw materials being irreversibly destroyed. The circular economy, on the other hand, takes nature’s material cycle as its model and aims to produce products without harmful emissions, to use products for as long as possible and to recover raw materials from products that are no longer usable so that the materials can be reused an infinite number of times. The circular economy is much more than simply recycling: it is an economic model that reduces the consumption of raw materials and conserves and supports the regeneration of natural resources.
SBB is one of the largest providers of external contracts in Switzerland with an annual procurement volume of CHF 6 billion, meaning significant material and energy use. An analysis carried out on material flow underlines the importance of the circular economy for SBB. With over 77 million tonnes of material, SBB possesses one of the largest material banks in Switzerland. The material flow resulting from SBB’s activities has considerable impacts on the environment and the climate. By achieving a circular economy, a large part of this material flow can be avoided and the resulting environmental impacts greatly reduced. For this reason, SBB is in the perfect position to play a leading role in the circular economy.
Since 2021, SBB has been running a Centre of Excellence focused on the circular economy. The Centre of Competence for the Circular Economy (CoC CE) has close links with synergy-relevant internal competence centres focusing on sustainability. The interdisciplinary team provides support with the launch and development of circular pilot projects and business models, develops Group-wide expertise and is responsible for the development and implementation of relevant governance aspects.
How can we get to a circular economy?
The use of circular business principles means that SBB can reduce its costs, secure important resources for the long term and help rail operations become more sustainable. The transition from the linear to the circular economy offers great potential.
SBB wants to take the circularity of products and services into account when making procurement and investment decisions and introduce circular business practices in the following three ways:
The quantity of newly extracted primary raw materials is to be reduced to a minimum. This is achieved by using fewer materials and increasing the proportion of recycled and/or rapidly renewable materials. In addition, care will be taken to ensure that materials can be recycled or broken down again at the end of their use.
Example: asphalt recycling.
SBB is playing a pioneering role in asphalt recycling. It has been using recycled asphalt for platform areas since 2020 (60% in the substrate and 40% in the visible surface layer). SBB installations are to be used for longer and more intensively. This efficiency improvement will result in the use of fewer materials and products to achieve the same level of performance, saving materials, energy and costs.
Example: circular construction of rail engineering buildings.
In future, the typical rail engineering building at SBB will be built in a modular fashion out of wooden elements. The facade will consist of wooden curtain wall elements with optional photovoltaic modules. The roof area will also be available for a photovoltaic system. This type of building absorbs less heat than conventional buildings made of concrete. Electronic equipment in the building therefore requires less cooling, resulting in a reduction in energy usage. At the end of its service life, the building can be broken up into its individual components and separated by material type to ensure it meets the criteria of circularity.
Assets are to be used more intensively and for a longer periods of time. This increase in efficiency will mean that fewer materials and products are used to achieve the same output. Material use, energy consumption and costs are therefore saved.
Example: renovation of train coaches.
The renovation of type EW IV train coaches includes protecting the body and floor of the coach against corrosion damage and upgrading the passenger compartment. They will be used on SBB’s long-distance services until the 2030s, keeping the already well-used coaches in circulation for even longer.
Example of Werkstadt Zürich.
The site of the SBB workshops in Zurich Altstetten is undergoing transformation. Over the next few years, it will be converted into an urban production facility called ‘Werkstadt Zürich’. The circular economy is a key element in this project: the existing, heritage-protected structure will be preserved, while some components will be recycled and sustainable materials like wood used. For example, old catenary masts were used as load-bearing structures in Q Hall, while the aluminium plates of scrapped SBB lighting pillars were repurposed for the lift cladding. This careful approach is making a major contribution towards optimising the project’s energy footprint and minimising CO2 emissions for the entire site.
At the end of products’ live cycles, the aim is to keep materials in circulation to cut waste and reduce demand for primary raw materials.
Example: reusing ballast.
Every year, SBB renews around 200km of track and about 600,000 tonnes of track ballast, most of which has been replaced with new ballast up until now.
Due to spatial planning regulations and nature conservation, it is becoming increasingly difficult to develop new sites for the extraction of materials that can be used for ballast in Switzerland. This makes reusing ballast and keeping it in circulation extremely important.
There are both environmental and financial benefits to reprocessing track ballast. Its reuse enables significant cost savings to be made.
Only reprocessed ballast is to be used from 2024 where feasible. The recycling rate for ballast will be continually increased to 50 percent by 2030.
SBB has – in addition to many other materials – over 130,000 catenary masts. Old catenary masts were generally recycled in the past, but are now to be reconditioned instead. Reconditioning will reduce environmental impact by around 80%, cut the CO2 footprint by about 80% and improve cost efficiency by 23% compared with recycling in the steelworks. 65 items are already being reconditioned and the aim is to increase that figure to 230 small and around 150 large catenary components by the end of 2025.
An assessment is currently being carried out as part of the ‘Krelawi’ (circular economy) project to determine which other rail technology materials could also be reused.
Life cycle assessments are fundamental for evaluating the environmental impact of construction projects and project variants. They enable fact-based decisions to foster sustainability. The SBB Emission Factors 2025 list available under “Downloads” contains several hundred data sets for railway-specific components and construction processes (in german, french and italian). It complements the Swiss KBOB list and shall be used in the planning of SBB infrastructure projects.
