(Featured image above: Female laborers adding building up a new wall of interlocking bricks with vertical reinforcement at one of Build up Nepal's projects.)  

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Transcript:

Björn Söderberg
I wanted to take a gap year before starting college. And, you know, come see the world, try to make a difference. So, I went to Nepal with that mindset. Then, I happened to live together with nine Nepalese orphans for a year. And it changed my life completely. It changed every single perspective I had since what I grew up with. It made me really question things.

Living with them made me realize I have to try to do something. And I learned that making a difference wasn't as easy as I had thought. So, I stayed. I stayed for a year. I stayed longer. I met my wife. And now it's been 25 years. And I love living in Asia.

So, what really kept me actually is I met my wife a few years later, but what really kept me there is that living in Nepal, living in Asia, you get to be part of this development that's just amazing. I mean, you have literally seen how more kids and more women go to school every year, how solar panels are being set up on the roof, how poverty is rapidly declining, how things are just getting better. Every single thing is getting better, except the climate. because at the same time, you see the Himalayas melting. It's very obvious. There are flash floods every year. At the same time, you see the air pollution has gone to levels that they're sometimes closing down schools because they shouldn't be outdoors. So, while everything else is going better, we are going in the opposite direction on this.

Ross Chambless:
Fascinating. One of the questions I was going to ask is I understand there's been political disturbance recently.

Björn Söderberg
Oh, yes. Well, Nepal is an amazing country in so many ways. And I think even the recent politics kind of shows it as well. Like Nepal is the kindest, nicest country in the world. It is the easiest place to make friends. I mean, I come from Sweden, where it's relatively difficult. You come to Nepal and it took me a week and I had nine friends and some of them are friends for life.  So you get welcomed into everything. And there is that development, there is this positivity in the air, like people are going somewhere.

And then it's challenging. I mean, during the time I was there, the monarchy was abolished a couple of years back. Democracy is young, it’s building up.  And now recently there was a massive protest that deteriorated into shootings and into destruction, eventually an overthrowing of the government by the young generation.  What is pretty amazing is while the government is being overthrown and while buildings are being burned down and everything, you feel safe in Nepal, despite all these things going on. And it also shows that there is a country where the youths can come out on the street and actually make a difference.

Ross Chambless
I wanted to pivot to some of your work as you've been living there. I understand you've been a social serial entrepreneur, right? You started a company called Watabaran?

Björn Söderberg
It means environment in Nepali.

Ross Chambless
Right, and this had to do with paper?

Björn Söderberg
It had to do with recycling actually.  So, I came there I lived with friends of mine, and we lived in a pretty poor area. It was very dirty. There was garbage lying outside a doorstep everywhere. The river was full of it.  And I just felt we have to recycle something. And the easiest thing to recycle was paper. We started there, and we recycled paper. We sold it in Sweden. And it was a way basically to create jobs for my friends and to get something going. And, I did it for a couple of years and then moved on and did a company for biofuel.

Ross Chambless
Okay. Was that called Shuba Briquettes? Or that was different?

Björn Söderberg
That's the one. Okay. Well, it was essentially what the, the idea is that there is a lot of deforestation in Nepal. They cut down the trees for firewood and fuel and using it in big industries. And that causes landslides and a lot of problems.  So, to replace both the use of firewood and of coal, we started making briquettes from agricultural waste, trying to replace this in big boilers.

Ross Chambless
And you also started an IT company?

Björn Söderberg
Yeah, it’s still running actually. It's a company called WebSearch.  It's basically developing digital solutions, mobile applications that contributes to sustainable society. So, we're building applications for the Stockholm Water Institute, UNIDO, organizations who work for a cause.

Ross Chambless
Really interesting. And to set up where Build Up Nepal came in, I understand at some point there was this massive earthquake in Nepal, April 15th, 2015. Where were you then? What happened?

Björn Söderberg
Well, I didn't know anything about construction. This was completely unplanned. There was this huge earthquake, and it destroyed 800,000 homes. It shook the whole country. And I was actually out of country. I was in Sweden. My wife was in Nepal, and it was scary. We couldn't reach. And, I came down two days later and I was there for the second earthquake because there was two earthquakes. There was one and there was one equally strong amount later.

Right after I came back, what we did was we went out to those villages to help people. And what struck me so hard when coming out right after the quake was that the devastation was horrible. And as always, it is somehow always the poor families that are hit the hardest.  Because those who could afford to live in well-built buildings in Kathmandu, I mean there was problems there as well, but when you come out to the villages, it was different. So, we went with one of my friends back to his home village. When we reached there after a couple of hours of drive, he hadn't been able to contact anyone. And we found a village with 1,100 houses, like three or four were left standing. Everything was completely demolished.

And that's where we basically started. We're trying to figure out how can we help families rebuild when the real problem is poverty. You can't afford to build something with modern materials. So, the reason why everything fell down is that the only thing they could afford was to build with what's in the ground, stone and mud. And it doesn't hold up well in an earthquake. So that's where everything started. We really started thinking like, how can we build houses that are so cheap the poorest families can afford them? That can withstand an earthquake.  And that's also eco-friendly.

Because the other big backstory is, what I realized when talking to people there was that every single family here dreams about living in a house made out of bricks. Bricks and concrete. That's the picture of a house in Nepal.  And the brick industry in Nepal is responsible for one third of our CO2 emissions.  And not only CO2 emissions, but there is also black carbon. So, the small soot particles of black carbon, they're not that harmful in themselves, but because where we are next to the Himalayan glacier, when those soot particles get into the glacier, they accelerate the melting, turning it black. And then it's the air pollution.  And 28,000 child laborers working in those brick kilns.  So, like this industry is just so terribly bad.  So, we thought at the same time, this is what every single family wants. They have this dream about one day; I'm going to save enough money so I can build a brick house like the middle class in Kathmandu.

Ross Chambless
So how did you go about figuring out the recipe for what you call interlocking bricks that you came up with?

Björn Söderberg
Well, we were out in that village. We were trying to think about ways to build and we tried everything. First, we built with bamboo. Then we built with something called earth bags. And we were looking around.  I went through YouTube. I checked everywhere. And I found that there was a German engineer in Thailand, who had invented a technology after their big earthquake in the ‘70s, called compressed stabilized earth bricks.

The main thing we were struggling with, the key question was in order to make this cheap enough, we have to work with what's in the village.  And we found this technology that was based on sand and soil and a little bit of cement, meaning that you have 90-95% of the materials locally. That's what we needed. So that's how we found it at first. And then we have spent the last 10 years optimizing this recipe and modernizing it and making it more effective.

Ross Chambless
And it's basically using materials that people can find in their immediate area and construct themselves?

Björn Söderberg
What you do essentially is, in Nepal, they do terrace farming. You dig out the terrace. You get a lot of soil left over. You mix that soil with a bit of sand from the river. Mix it with a little bit of cement and recently also industrial ashes. And you compress it in a machine. You don't need to burn it. The main thing is you don't need to burn coal to make it. The machines are manually powered. No electricity is needed. You can take them up to a village. You can sometimes carry them up. We have taken them on donkeys in some cases to remote villages. It works everywhere.

Ross Chambless
Wow. And so, you have these compressing machines, and I understand you have different sizes depending on the situation. Yeah. But those get sort of borrowed or loaned out?

Björn Söderberg
No. Actually, when we started this we worked in two villages. We were starting everything there. And we were just trialing, we were trying our way forward. We noticed one thing. When we started building with these bricks, people were skeptical. They saw we brought in machines; we started pressing, they were looking and no one really believed in it.

But when the first house was built to about one-and-a-half-meter height, people were standing around and saying like, "Wow, this is a brick house that we can make ourselves?” And the key thing is that our walls are at least 40% cheaper than the fire bricks. And that's the key. Because then they realized this is that brick house that we have been dreaming about, suddenly affordable. We had the entire village standing around and asking, "When can I get bricks?"

And then we just thought, this is something that really works. How do we spread this technology to every town, every village across the whole country? We want to go everywhere. But how do we do that practically? Because the challenge that you have when you're working in a country like Nepal is that we can see it from all the charity organizations. As soon as you start working in hundreds of villages, in remote locations, you get a lot of overhead, it gets expensive.

But, I mean, I'm an entrepreneur. I always liked to work with other entrepreneurs. So, we did it differently. We started looking, who are the driven entrepreneurs in these villages? So, what our model is all about… and in fact, our biggest innovation, isn't the bricks, it's the model around this. It's what we find the driven local entrepreneurs. Someone who grew up in that village who knows each and every one, who knows the local context perfectly. They buy a machine. We help them set up a small factory. We teach them how to make bricks, how to build earthquake-resistant houses. And then they build their own communities. Because they build without any overhead. They know exactly who they should hire and not hire, who they can trust. They can manage everything locally. They know exactly where to get all the raw materials. They're the best people to do it by themselves.

Then we train the existing masons and builders into a new technology. So, we get into the current ecosystem of construction and just build on it. We teach the government engineers who is there to ensure quality of buildings, how to check this type of construction and build a system around it. But the key is that we don't build houses, we teach people to build houses so they can build it themselves. They only need us to get started. And then they continue on their own.

Ross Chambless
That's fascinating. So, it's almost like you are able to help these entrepreneurs, these local entrepreneurs sort of set up franchises and using this technology. But then they're on their own and they can build.

Björn Söderberg
Yeah. I mean, the most amazing thing is, in so many cases, you've been out in the village, you've seen this entrepreneur get started, and they're taking the first steps and getting their first houses built. And often our engineers go there once in a while to follow up and support them. And then I come back after five years, and you see a small town with like 200 houses built. It's just amazing what these local entrepreneurs have done.

We have right now a network of about 220 active enterprises. So, all in different locations, managing their own place. And that's really the key. That's how it's scalable. That's how it gets cheap. That's how it gets effective.

Ross Chambless
Also, socially, you seem to be really helping these communities. I understand that unemployment is very high across the country, but this gives people things to do.

Björn Söderberg
Yeah, exactly. And especially, if you compare it with traditional brick manufacturing, what you have is very large factories that destroys the environment completely. Horrible working conditions. Here, instead, you decentralize.  Small micro factories. Most of them has four to ten employees based in their own villages, where there is otherwise very few. All the jobs are in the cities. So, people leave the countryside. Here, the jobs are where the buildings are built. So, you set them up in small, small locations. You scatter it out. And we have now currently about 2,000 jobs created by those enterprises. So, it makes a big difference.

Ross Chambless
I understand that there was a challenge or a test that occurred. There was another earthquake, right? Not long ago, in 2023, November. Can you talk about that and how that put your construction to the test?

Björn Söderberg
Yeah. Actually, this is what we have been afraid of for a long time. Because we started with the idea that we need to make sure that this can never happen again. And what we have gone from is we started with reconstruction. And then we started thinking we have to rebuild houses before the next earthquake happens. And then finally it happened. So, in 2023, there was a big earthquake. It destroyed about 79,000 homes in West Nepal, a remote location. And when this happened, we immediately went out to see how the situation. And it was horrible. I mean, 80, 90% of all buildings in the area is destroyed.

We had two of our entrepreneurs at the epicenter who had been there established for two years. They had built 24 buildings. There were houses, schools, government offices, hospital. And each and every one of them were completely undamaged.

And that's because the real other advantage of our technology is these interlocking bricks. They look like Legos. And what's so brilliant about it is you can put reinforcement bars through the holes in the bricks that anchors them in the foundation and goes all the way up. And it makes the building really strong in both earthquakes and floods. And this put it to the test for real. So, when almost every other building was either damaged or destroyed, our buildings were completely undamaged. And this has created a lot of trust in the technology.

So now we are about to enter a phase of reconstruction where these houses need to be rebuilt. And in just the last one year, we have set up 40 new enterprises in this area in preparation for this massive reconstruction that's coming. And we believe that this is also a time to really introduce better, stronger, cheaper technology, not only to this place, but demonstrating it here. I think this can become the standard for low-cost construction in all of Nepal.

Ross Chambless
That's amazing. To what degree do you feel like, across Nepal, that this technology or this approach has been catching on? Is it getting – are people trusting it? Are people recognizing it as this could be our future or a new approach to building homes?

Björn Söderberg
It's happening, but it's slowly. Until now, together our entrepreneurs have built about 12,000 homes. But we are still about less than 1% of the fire bricks.

So still, we are struggling with that. When you build a house, most people by default just go and buy the fire bricks because that's what a house is made of.

Now, what's beginning to happen is that in each of these 200-plus communities where our entrepreneurs are, that mindset is changing. One place at a time. What we always see is that these enterprises – building the first five to ten houses is difficult. They have to struggle to convince.  We try to help them a lot to get that through. Once they reach that tipping point, people see – wow, these houses are looking beautiful. They're strong. They're standing tall. They're cheap to build. It starts snowballing on its own. So, we see a snowballing effect. At the same time, we are working to disrupt an industry that is like 80 years old and fully established. Almost every other house is built with fire bricks. So, it's a big thing. But it's on a really good track.

Ross Chambless
Do you sense resistance from that established industry because you are disrupting, you're moving into their space?

Björn Söderberg
Actually, we were at first, but it has changed.

In the beginning we saw that. We still have it to some extent. But in the last two years, something has drastically changed. It might be our approach because we went to them, and we started talking to them. We said, we're not competing with you. You are the brick manufacturers. This is a better way to make bricks. So, in fact, we are now in talk to some of them who are interested to pick up this technology. And the first step will not be to shut down their brick hill. They want to do it in parallel. They want to see the market. They want to gradually – but they are interested to try a transition.

So, we have gone from them being a little bit of the enemy to now saying, hey, we are coming with a better technology to make bricks. Why don't you use it? Because for them also, it has other advantages. It's much cheaper. Why would they invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in a brick kiln when our machines, for 50 times lower the price, can do the job? So, it gets interesting for them too.

Ross Chambless
Cheaper and cleaner, right?

Björn Söderberg
And much cleaner. Right now we are at about 75 to 80 percent lower CO2 emissions. And I believe that in the next two years, we're probably going to get to 90 percent less. We are looking at reducing the cement content in our bricks. We are replacing it with rice husk ash, and we are replacing it with some other replacements. And long term, we believe we are on track to develop carbon neutral bricks. It's complex. It needs a lot of testing.

We are always trying to work in the sense of, we have one wing of the company who's out there in the field and working and building new buildings. And then we have the research department who's always looking at like how we can cut the emissions, reduce the cost, make the brick stronger. So that goes on in parallel.

Ross Chambless
I guess a big question I'm sure a lot of people wonder is, you know, there's so many parts of the world that do experience natural disasters similar to Nepal, where whole communities lose their homes, whether it's an earthquake or some other natural disaster. And they may be in the same position to want to rebuild, but do it in a way that's cleaner and secure. To what degree do you think the solution is scalable to other parts of Asia or other parts of the world for that matter?

Björn Söderberg
We have really looked at this also. What we have seen is that it's not only for disasters even. In any part of the world where we have a high need for low-cost housing, there is a demand for bricks.  And that gives us entire South Asia – I mean, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan. And then we have China, which is the biggest brick manufacturer in the world. Large parts of Africa, essentially almost the entire global South.

Then, of course, it's even more effective where there is either earthquakes or floods, which unfortunately is almost all of those countries as well.

And what I think is really important, and why this has worked, is that I believe that when we introduce a climate technology, we shouldn't introduce it as a climate technology. It's stronger, it's cheaper, it looks better, and it's climate friendly.

Because the families that we are targeting, I mean, most of these families are living on less than $2 a day. They might see the Himalayas melting, they're feeling the effects of it, but they haven't caused it. And you can't expect them to be the ones to solve it. But this becomes indirect. They are getting the cheaper, stronger, better house and being part of solving climate change.

Ross Chambless
Yeah, that makes so much sense. They have these other needs that are more important first before they can care about that.

Björn Söderberg
Exactly. I mean, to be frank, even if we look here in the US, or in Sweden where I'm from, as soon as you say that it's a little bit more expensive, the vast majority is not going to buy it. And the reason why we got where we are is because it's not just cheaper, it's substantially cheaper. And what I think is that we need to look at solutions and innovation from these angles, like how do we make something that's sustainable and better at the same time?

Ross Chambless
Well, just a few more questions. Aside from sort of introducing or disrupting a new market, what other sort of challenges have you faced to try to bring this new technology on board and get people to use it and to trust it?

Björn Söderberg
I think one of the biggest challenges has been what we call the ecosystem around this.

So, when you introduce a new construction technology, in the beginning, we were all focused on how we have the brick and the machine and the construction. And we learned quite quickly, that's actually the least of our problems. Because around that, you have so many other things.

When you're going to build a house, we thought, yeah, we have to convince the house owner to build. There are probably 50 decision makers in this process. You have the house owner and their family. He probably has a brother who works in construction in someplace else. He's going to ask him what he thinks about this. Then there is the government engineer in that village. They were educated 30 years ago before this technology was in the country and has never heard of it before. You have the local masons that's been building with fired bricks for the last 25 years. And the contractors are building with them as well.

So, what you need to do is to get the entire ecosystem to change. What we learned is we went from an idea where we initially were training people on technical knowledge towards creating the system around it. We have learned is that the only thing that we need to do is to give our entrepreneurs and their technology an equal chance. Once they have that, they take over.

But the problem is they go there, they're going to build a house, and the government engineer looks at this brick and says, I've never seen this before. I don't know how they're going to build with it, and I don't know how to ensure the quality.

So, we've started training the government engineers. Because we now systematically train government engineers in all the areas we work. And then we have the masons that have been building with fired bricks for the last 20 years. So, we are training them and making them like the promoters of the technology, teaching them how they can benefit from it. And in the same way, we try to go to each and every stakeholder in the ecosystem.

And on top of that, you have regulatory issues. Because when you take out a government tender, for example, per default, it says “fired bricks.” Then you have these entrepreneurs say, ‘hey, I have a brick here that's 40% cheaper to build a local school.’ ‘No, you can't, because the tender document says fired bricks.’ And that's where we come in.

So, we try to pick up on all these problems that the entrepreneurs are facing. We go to the central government, and we try to sort out those processes. So that's why it becomes effective. Like the local enterprise, on their local level, they are promoting, they're engaging, they're doing everything there. We come on the central level and make sure that we get something that we can solve all those barriers.

Ross Chambless
I see. So, the local ecosystem?

Björn Söderberg
That's really the trick. And I think when you introduce a new technology or you try to disrupt something, what I've learned from this is that really you need to think about that ecosystem, to see the bigger picture. In the beginning, we were focused on our little construction. You need to understand everything that goes on around it.

Ross Chambless
Right. I'm also wondering, so as an expat from Sweden, now living in Nepal, do people in Nepal still regard you as a foreigner, or have they accepted you? Is there a level of trust? Or do you ever experience feeling people regard you as an outsider still?

Björn Söderberg
So that's the amazing thing about Nepal.  You know, me and my wife moved to Sweden for a while, for six months. It didn't work out. Because when you come from Nepal to Sweden, you're an immigrant. When you come from Sweden to Nepal, you're an expat. But when you can speak a little bit of Nepali and when you have a Nepali wife, then you're our brother. For real. And that's not just something that people say. That's something that they mean. It's one of the most welcoming countries in the world. I feel like I'm one of everyone.

Ross Chambless
That's really nice to hear.

I wonder as far as introducing these new approaches to doing things within this country. Do you think your experiences from growing up outside of Nepal and trying to implement these new approaches to things, has that been helpful at times? Has it been challenging at times?

Björn Söderberg
It's been both, actually. It's been very helpful. But the key thing, I think, is that we have a team with different experience. Because I'll give you one example.

In the very beginning when we started out, we were out in this village, and me with my Swedish mind, I figured out that bamboo is the best solution to build in Nepal. It is the cheapest. It is the most earthquake resistant. It is available in a lot of places. And we started building bamboo houses. And people were really happy about them. But no one copied them.

And then my wife, Bina. So that's the difference. When we were discussing this, she said, you know, give me a day or two. And she went and talked with all the women in the village. And because they would always say [to me] ‘ah, this is so great. It's really good.’ And they had nothing bad to say. But when she sat down with them informally and chatted and talked it over in the evening and blah, blah, she came back after two days and said, look, bamboo where they house the animals.

What everyone here is saying, what they have been saying here in this village, what they see is that in the nearby town is people are building with bricks. That's the middle class. That's the aspiration. That's where every single one wants to be. That's the dream. And then all of a sudden it makes sense.

And it is when you put these perspectives together. And that's what we have learned. What's interesting is that, in our team, we have engineers, we have people from business background. But we have a lot of people who come. In one of the first villages we worked, we had this mason. He was amazing. His name is Kul Bahadur. And we hired him.

And he gave us another perspective, because he is a mason from one of these earthquake-affected villages. He's been living there his whole life. And the thing is that when he comes out to explain to families how it works, they listen. Because he knows how to say it. And he also picks up these nuances from the field. Because the way that we are improving the model is that it's about always – one of the most important things is to listen. Like my wife did in the beginning, but like all our team is doing now. Listen to our entrepreneurs. Listen to the people in the villages. Understanding what they want.

So, what we are always trying to do is that someone is coming out there and they know that our first responsibility is to listen. And then we teach. And then we come back and we sit down. What have we learned from here? And that's how we basically have developed everything here. And that's the process that needs to go on. And that's why I think me coming in as a foreigner has helped to give outside perspective. But only when you combine that.

If I had come there myself, it wouldn't have worked. And probably the reason why it has worked is by the time this earthquake happened, I'd already been living in Nepal for 15 years. So, I knew people. I had understood the culture to a big extent. But it's when you combine it. That's when things get interesting.

Ross Chambless
Yeah. I think that's such a valuable lesson that can be taken away, hopefully, for many other entrepreneurs and projects similar to yours.

This is sort of my final question, because I feel like your story is very inspiring and hopefully inspiring for a lot of people going forward. How do you imagine sustainability, and the clean energy movement, and kind of the projects that you're doing now, how this might hopefully brighten hopes for democracy or social equality for Nepal or other places beyond? Because, I mean, it seems what you're doing is really helping to make for many Nepali people is to be able to have that brick house, to have a higher quality of life.

Björn Söderberg
Yeah. So, I mean, on one hand, I'm very focused on Nepal. But we are looking at internationally. What we are hoping is here to build up something that can be replicated. Our whole model is based on local entrepreneurs replicating. Our next step is to do the same thing internationally.

Now, we have Build up Nepal. We need to find the person who is interested in starting Build up India, and Bangladesh, and Pakistan, and replicate it in that sense.

I mean, we are a non-profit company. That means that we're not very concerned about we should be the ones to introduce our technology. What we want to say is that, hey, please come and copy this.

Or even more, and what is inspiring being here at the university, is that what happens today, we sitting here have a lot of solutions to climate change. But what we need is to go from ideas to action to implementation. What I'm hoping that we can also do is that it's not only people copying our bricks and our model. What I really hope is that what we can do can make others inspire to dare to do their idea. To say, like, to get over themselves and their own often internal fears of actually getting started. It's like, I'm going to do it. We have this idea. We have this technology that's much better, much smarter. And I'm going to go ahead and make it happen. Or stick your neck out and change something in the company that you're working. Because I think the real transition comes that you see that other people doing it is possible. Now, I'm going to do something, but maybe not the same thing, but my thing. I think that's so important.

And that's how this whole movement is coming together. We need to inspire each other. Like, while we do bricks in Nepal, someone else is doing [other things]. I saw this amazing wood here, for example, a synthetic wood. And someone else is changing the process of doing different chemicals. And that's what it's all about, actually.

Because we cannot solve climate change with one or two ideas. It is about advancing all these technologies and advancing them rapidly. And for that, what I think is we need to just… we need to really, really move quickly. And we need to get started. And we need to not let nothing stop us. And that, I think, we can inspire each other.

Ross Chambless
Well, that's a wonderful way to wrap up our conversation. But, again, congratulations on winning the prize this year. I hope you enjoy the few days that you're here to visit here in Salt Lake City, Utah. And good luck in the future. But we, yeah, look forward to what

Björn Söderberg
And I would like to say one thing here on the end about the prize. Because this is really pivotal for us, especially from where we are right now. We have come to this point where we have reached a reasonable scale for our technology. But now, going from these 12,000 houses to 100,000 is the key. And we are at the point where we are about to step into the largest reconstruction project since the previous earthquake, 10 years ago. And this is the time that we need all the resources we can muster. Because there is now 80,000 families sitting without houses. We have the cheapest and strongest solution. And we have it proven. Our challenge is going to be that once all these families start building, and that will happen when the government releases their construction grants, all of them will start building at once. So, our challenge is to ride this wave, to make sure that we can support as many as possible into safe, clean houses, and at the same time prove that this technology can really go big.

So, I think the Wilkes Climate Prize will really help us do that.

Ross Chambless
I hope so. Well, Björn Söderberg, thank you so much.

Björn Söderberg
Thank you.