Mark Annandale, Director of Research and IPAF Adviser at the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI), brings extensive experience in environmental science and community forestry. Based in Australia, he leads ASI’s research efforts and Indigenous Peoples Advisory Forum, fostering collaboration between Indigenous communities, mining companies, and governments to promote responsible bauxite mining and sustainable practices across the aluminium value chain.

In an interview for “Sustainability & Recycling: Aluminium's Dual Commitment” e-Magazine, Mark Annandale discusses ASI’s key sustainability goals for 2025, focusing on expanding certifications, promoting circularity, and strengthening engagement with local communities. He emphasizes the importance of both recycling and automation in advancing sustainability, highlights ASI’s initiatives for inclusive recycling practices, and outlines ongoing efforts to update certification standards in alignment with global frameworks like CBAM. Mark also underscores the vital role of renewable energy and responsible bauxite mining in achieving the aluminium industry’s net-zero ambitions.

AL Circle: Could you share your key sustainability goals for 2025 and highlight the initiatives already implemented, along with those planned for the near future? 

Mark Annandale: We are looking at further enhancing some of our sustainability initiatives, and one of the primary ones is to boost membership, increase certification for us in the organisation, and to create greater awareness for several other initiatives, such as circularity and recycling, bringing more mining operations into the certification network and embedding circularity principles - reuse and recycle.

AL Circle: Do you plan to bring new criteria for ASI certification eligibility, given the CBAM is about to get implemented within the next few months? 

Mark Annandale: ASI is currently going through a review of the standards, including our performance standard and our chain of custody standard, and we have a multi-stakeholder group responsible for reviewing, assessing the current performance standard and developing version 4 of our ASI standards.  A multi-stakeholder group, the Standards Committee, is responsible for developing versions. It will not be an incremental talk but a stepwise incorporation of changes. 

AL Circle: Recycling or automation – which, according to you, should be the way forward to advance sustainability goals? (for aluminium industry) 

Mark Annandale: They are both equally important, I think, but recycling, particularly, in some geographic locations needs to be accelerated more and be more inclusive. So, we are doing some initiatives with pickers and looking at a pilot programme that is underway now in Colombia to bring waste pickers into the mainstream to improve their working conditions, their standard of work, their safety, and also increase the sharing of the market. The pilot project is thriving, and so we are expanding it in other geographic locations

AL Circle:  What important role does renewable energy have to play in this? 

Mark Annandale: It will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enabling the industry to operate with a smaller carbon footprint. However, in some regions, there remains a strong dependence on coal, which we must collectively work to reduce in order to reach net-zero emissions in the future. 

To deep dive further, read the complete interview here