Europe’s recycled aluminium industry is an important component of the global secondary aluminium supply chain, with Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom (UK) representing key national markets. Production across the European region stood at nearly 6 million tonnes in 2023, supported by established scrap recovery systems, industrial recycling capacity and demand for recycled metal. Russia also contributes to the regional landscape through secondary aluminium production units concentrated in several industrial centres. According to AL Circle’s analysis in its report, “ World Recycled ALuminium Market Analysis Industry Forecast ”, the four countries present different market structures, from Germany’s substantial recycling capacity and Italy’s scrap-based production to the UK’s organised...
According to SMM survey statistics, the operating rate of the secondary aluminium alloy industry in September was 35.0 per cent, up 3.1 percentage points M-o-M but down 6.7 percentage points Y-o-Y. Industry production continued its recovery trend, but the overall operating level remained below the same period last year. On the demand side, September marked the traditional peak consumption season, with downstream orders recovering from August. End-use demand from automobiles and other sectors improved marginally, but the peak season effect has yet to fully materialise. According to CAAM data, automobile production in September was 2.99 million units, up 11.4 per cent M-o-M but down 8.7 per cent Y-o-Y. NEV production was 1.814 million units, up 12.2 per cent Y-o-Y. CAAM noted that China's...
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The Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP) embraces the Commission’s ambition to phase out landfilling of recyclable and recoverable waste and urges the decision makers to promote quality recycling. Waste-to-energy is complementary to quality recycling, helping to achieve a clean circular economy. If waste is too polluted for quality recycling, it should be used to generate local, affordable and secure energy in waste-to-energy plants. CEWEP endorses the Commission’s proposal to phasing out landfilling of recyclable and recoverable waste. However, the confederation would have preferred a more ambitious deadline: by 2020 rather than 2025 and 2030 respectively. This delay is a lost opportunity for improving resource use, considering that more than 80 million tonnes of...
The European Aluminium Association (EAA) has welcomed the European Commission’s efforts to strengthen the EU waste policy framework as an important step forward in Europe’s transition to a circular economy. In this context it is also calling for achievable recycling targets and accurate definitions. ”EAA welcomes the European Commission’s package and supports many of its flagship proposals, including the new requirements on waste exports to combat illegal shipments of waste, the gradual phasing out of landfilling of recyclable waste, the reference to recyclability and durability in eco-design requirements, and the call for a better reporting of data. These are all essential conditions to achieve more ambitious recycling targets and to ensure a level playing field among products and...
The European Commission today (July 2) formally adopted proposals for the future of waste and recycling targets within Europe, as part of measures towards achieving a circular economy. Key among the proposals is an increased target for Member States to recycle or reuse 70% of municipal waste by 2030, an increase on the current 50% by 2020 target. . The Commission is also proposing a ban on sending recyclable materials such as plastics, paper, metals, glass and biodegradable waste to landfill by 2025, as well as phasing out landfilling of waste by 2030. And, higher packaging targets were also proposed. Having been adopted by the European Commission this morning, the proposals will pass to the European Council of Ministers and the European Parliament for consideration by politicians....
A report by Dr. Frank Hefner, an economist with the College of Charleston Department of Economics and Finance, finds that the recycling industry in South Carolina brings in $13 billion to the state's economy each year - double the estimated impact of recycling in 2006. The economic impact report quantified the contributions of recycling through a combination of direct survey data from recycling companies as well as economic modeling through IMPLAN, a method of bringing industry data together to enable businesses and nonprofits to demonstrate their worth to the public sector. Despite the recession, the report finds that the total economic impact of recycling activities in the state grew nearly five percent annually to double its impact in eight years, while recycling's benefit to jobs...
According to the City of Sydney, around 15,000 bottles and cans across Australia are thrown into landfill waste or littered every hour, instead of being recycled -- about 58 percent of all recyclable material annually. To help minimise this waste, it is trialling Envirobank "reverse vending machines" on Dixon Street in Haymarket and Alfred Street in Circular Quay. The vending machines, which can hold around 2,000 bottles before needing to be emptied, offer several different rewards to people who deposit their aluminium, PET and glass bottles: two-for-one food truck vouchers, a chance to win two tickets to the 2014 New Year's Eve Festivities at Dawes Point, or entry in a jackpot to win bus tickets. Alternatively, you can choose to donate 10 cents per container to Clean-Up Australia. "These...
More Scottish companies are recycling after the introduction of new regulations, according to a report. Since the start of the year businesses have been required to separate all waste metal, plastic and card for recycling. The Every Can Counts programme, which focuses on recycling aluminium, said it has helped hundreds of Scottish organisations become compliant with the regulations. A survey of 1,000 businesses found 72% have implemented the regulations and 91% have set future targets, an increase from last year when 68% of businesses said they were setting recycling targets. Andrew McFarlan, programme manager for Every Can Counts in Scotland, said: “Great progress has been made in the past year in getting Scotland’s businesses to meet the requirements of the Waste (Scotland) Regulations....
The Arizona Department of Transportation is implementing a recycling program at its rest areas. The state has already installed recycling receptacles at three of its rest areas and plans to bring in its other sites soon. “With each site visit I make to our rest areas, I see how necessary recycling is,” says Bobby Wheeler, rest area manager for ADOT. “There are large amounts of plastic bottles and aluminum cans tossed in waste receptacles that go to a landfill without first being separated. We need to do the right thing and ensure recyclable materials are actually getting recycled.” The program is possible at no cost to the state thanks to partnerships the Infrastructure Corporation of America and the local recycling vendors that serve each rest area. In McGuireville, the partnership...
LRS Consultancy (LRS), a London-based research firm, in partnership with the environmental services company Enval, the waste management and recycling firm SITA UK, the consumer products companies Nestlé UK & Ireland and Coca-Cola Enterprises and the retailer Tesco UK, is undertaking a study that will address various approaches for collecting and treating flexible plastic and aluminum laminate packaging materials. To assist with the study, the U.K’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has provided to LRS and its partnership group with funding. The initial study will explore ways to increase the amount of flexible laminate packaging that is collected and recycled in England. The study also will assess the feasibility of a range of collection and communication...
Sims Metal Management Ltd., with corporate headquarters in Sydney and New York City, has announced restructuring initiatives that it says are designed to streamline Sims Recycling Solutions, its electronics recycling business. The review has determined that certain loss-making assets are outside of the company’s strategic long-term interests. These operations include a substantial portion of Sims Recycling Solutions operations in the United Kingdom and all of the company’s operations in Canada. Legislation and market dynamics in these two countries have resulted in these businesses being commercially unattractive to the company going forward, according to Sims Metal Management. Sims Metal Management says it will redirect its capital and resources to other portions of the global businesses...
The UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has provided funding for a project to scope out viable approaches for collecting and recycling flexible packaging materials containing aluminium, such as toothpaste tubes and pet food sachets. Funded by Defra’s Action Based Research programme, the project will be led by LRS Consultancy in partnership with Enval, SITA UK, Nestlé UK & Ireland and Coca-Cola Enterprises and is aimed at improving the recycling and the remanufacture of aluminium. Retail giant, Tesco UK will also be supporting the project with communications and the provision of recycling facilities. LRS explained that flexible laminate packaging often contains valuable aluminium and various recyclable plastics, which can be difficult to collect and...
Arkansas State University Mountain Home recently hosted a free electronic waste recycling roundup for the first time in the Twin Lakes Area, where members of the community were invited to drop off old computers, TVs, printers and other unwanted electronic items. Over the course of the two-day event, residents, nonprofits and businesses brought about 60,000 pounds, or 30 tons, of e-waste, which filled more than three 53-foot semi-trailers. Volunteers from the city of Mountain Home, Baxter County, Baxter Recycling, Start 2 Start Recycling, Ozark Mountain Solid Waste District, Friends of the North Fork and White Rivers and the Mountain Home community at large helped with the event. During this recycling process, hazardous waste was safely and responsibly removed from electronic items, metals...
This week, customers were invited to tour the Deeside plant and see its latest investments. Through installing a new sawing and continuous homogenizing line, the Deeside recycling plant now can offer seven-meter-long extrusion ingots, the standard length of such products in Europe. With the ability to offer the standard product length, the new equipment makes it easier for the plant to also serve the market in continental Europe. Several HSE benefits "The old equipment limited the length of our product to 6.4 meters, and the old batch homogenizing furnace consumed significantly more energy than the new equipment. Thus, we expect to cut our energy consumption by 100 kWh per mt, approximately 6.3 GWh per year," says Sue Bairstow, managing director of the plant. She also highlights health...
Aluminum Corporation of China will invest 57 billion yuan ($9.25 billion) in Shanxi before 2020 to build an advanced aluminum recycling industry base, the company said on its website. In accordance with its cooperation framework agreement with the provincial government of Shanxi, the company will develop a 2 million tpy-aluminum capacity via capacity replacement, build a 10 million tpy-coal mine and coal washing plant, a 3.5 million kw low-calorific value coal-fired power plant, and a 1 million-tpy high-end aluminum fabrication project.
Recycle Week 2014 kicks off today (June 16) with a number of events taking place up and down the UK aimed at encouraging people to cut waste and recycle more. The 11th annual recycling awareness week runs until Sunday June 22 and will this year operate under the theme ‘Recycling at Home and Away’ to promote recycling in public spaces – a theme that it has focused on in past years. Recycle Week is coordinated and funded by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), which provides information and promotional resources for councils and businesses to set up local events. Recycle for Wales is supporting the 2014 event by trying to encourage people to make the most of any one of the 1,041 public recycling bins funded by the Welsh Government during the last 12 months. Andrew Osborne from...
Discarded electronics are poised to provide a growing source of secondary commodities within India, according to a recently published report by TechSci Research called India E-Waste Management Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2019. Noida, India-based TechSci Research says India’s e-scrap market “is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of around 30.6 percent during 2014-19.” The report identifies cities and regions that host “IT hubs, such as Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad,” as places where volumes will rise particularly fast. “However, the country’s western and northern regions are also growing at a significant rate due to the introduction of new recycling facilities, especially in Delhi [and the] National Capital Region,” the report adds. “The enforcement of e-waste...
Burlingame, California, has broken ground on an electronics recycling facility in Osceola, Arkansas, which aims to extract precious metals from obsolete electronics collected throughout the region. The company says it expects the plant to be operational by the end of 2015, processing 15 million pounds of electronic scrap per year initially. BlueOak says it hopes to rapidly expand the operation. Helping to fund the construction project are the Arkansas Teachers’ Retirement Fund, a consortium of European and U.S. investors and the Arkansas Development Finance Authority. The partners expect to invest $35 million on the project, which will extract and refine scrap metal such as gold, silver copper and palladium. Other parties involved in financing for the project include The Heartland...
Novelis, the world leader in aluminium rolling and recycling, announced today that it successfully cast the first production-sized ingot – almost 10 meters long – at its 200 million Euro aluminium recycling and casting center in Nachterstedt, Germany. Located adjacent to the company’s existing aluminium rolling mill, the new plant will produce up to 400,000 metric tons of aluminium sheet ingot from recycled material annually, and is projected to be the world’s largest aluminium recycling center. The company is still in the process of actively recruiting qualified candidates to fill the center’s 200 new jobs. After laying the first stone in March 2013, celebrating the roofing ceremony in June 2013 and installing the first equipment in November 2013, the project continues to progress on...
The Gulf Co-Operation Council (GCC) region’s aluminium scrap market will achieve an annual growth rate of around 10.6% between the period 2010 to 2017. According to Frost & Sullivan, the research firm, the volume of scrap that originates from Middle East will reach 500 000 tons by 2015. Of these total volume, about 360 000 tons will be exported to South Korea, Pakistan, India, North America, Europe and other markets. Out of these, 'The Middle East - the GCC is considered one of the world’s fastest growing aluminium markets , says Venkatesan Subramanian, Metals & Minerals Practice at Frost & Sullivan’s vice president & global leader. The Middle East has a total aluminium recycling rate of about 20% and it includes smelter remelting, secondary remelting and scrap generation. The Middle East...
