Hydro gains international praise for innovative advances in aluminium recycling
Hydro has received prominent recognition at the Dezeen Awards in London, securing both “Material Innovation of the Year” and “Sustainability Project of the Year” for its progress in aluminium recycling. Hydro’s Hydro CIRCAL 100R, made solely from post-consumer aluminium through advanced recycling, earned the accolades after being used by global designers to create finished works.
Hydro wins recognition for the 2024 debut of Hydro CIRCAL 100R and the 2025 R100 project..
Asle Forsbak, Marketing and Communication Director at Hydro Extrusions and project lead for both initiatives, describes the recognition as an important signal from the wider design community: “Following the Elle Decoration International Design Award for best Sustainable Achievement, which we received earlier this year, this is another huge recognition from the design and architecture industry that recycled aluminium can be part of the solution for the future.”
The 100R and R100 projects opened Hydro’s Milan series with strong showings at Milan Design Week in 2024 and 2025, using recycled aluminium to make ideas like urban mining, circularity and broader sustainability easier to understand.
A central feature of each chapter has been the collaboration with international product designers. Working from an open design brief, the participants were free to apply their own creative perspective, resulting in twelve different interior design pieces made using aluminium extrusions.
Designer and Art Director, Lars Beller Fjetland, oversaw the creative direction of the projects, developed the strategy alongside Hydro, selected the participating designers, and coordinated parallel product development with the company’s engineering teams.
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The Dezeen Awards sustainability jury highlighted the broader significance of Hydro CIRCAL 100R, noting that its influence “is sure to be felt far beyond the world of design and architecture, offering a rare glimpse of not just hope, but real progress.” The jury further remarked that by managing to produce aluminium with a 100 per cent recycled content, Hydro is pointing towards “a truly circular future with an infinite material loop,” and that the company’s industrial-scale facilities are already turning this ambition into reality.
Hydro CIRCAL 100R carries a carbon footprint of under 0.5 kg CO₂e per kilogram of aluminium, around 97 per cent lower than the global average. This near-zero impact stems from using only post-consumer scrap, giving the material a starting carbon footprint of zero. The remaining emissions come solely from the melting, processing and casting of the recovered metal.
Earlier in the year, Hydro received the Elle Decoration International Design Award for best Sustainable Achievement for its 100R project, which coincided with the material’s official launch in 2024.
The company’s work has since drawn further accolades, including a shortlist for Best Exhibition at the 2024 Dezeen Awards, the title of Producer of the Year at the 2025 Norwegian Design Awards hosted by Bo Bedre, and shortlistings in the B2B Communication and Industrial, Engineering and Manufacturing categories at the European Excellence Awards.
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