The Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI) certified over two dozen of Atlanta’s rolled aluminium firm Novelis Inc’s aluminium scrap collection centers in Brazil this week under its Performance Standard Certification.
The fourteen scrap aluminium centers operated by Novelis in Brazil collect mostly aluminium beverage cans and recycles them into new aluminium sheet. That new sheet is used to make more aluminium beverage cans, completing the circular economy. The entire process can take as little as 60 days to complete.
Eunice Lima, Director, Communications and Government Affairs, Novelis South America, elaborated upon the firm’s views on the circular economy in a related press release.
“As part of our circular economy business model, every year, Novelis collects and recycles 64% of the beverage cans recycled in Brazil. Achieving the ASI Performance Standard Certification demonstrates that Novelis is appropriately addressing environmental, social and governance principles for the production of aluminum, and demonstrates that our production practices are responsible.”
ASI’s Performance Standard is the product of consultations with a multitude of stakeholders throughout the aluminium value chain, which ASI asserts is the sole comprehensive voluntary sustainability standard initiative in the aluminium sector. The standard defines 59 criteria categorized in three sustainability pillars that cover several issues, including biodiversity, Indigenous Peoples rights, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Last year Brazilians recycled 98.7 percent of the aluminium beverage cans sold in country. Novelis recycled almost two-thirds of those cans, or around 21 billion aluminium beverage cans last year alone.
The ASI is a worldwide organization dedicated to setting industrial standards and certifications in the aluminium industry. The association brings together the various stakeholders in the aluminium industry in order to achieve objectives including sustainable production methods, material chain-of-custody procedures, recycling, social impacts related to aluminium production, and production standards.
Novelis is a subsidiary of Mumbai’s Hindalco Industries Ltd. Based in Atlanta, the firm accounts for almost half of Hindalco’s consolidated revenue. The world’s largest recycler of aluminium, Novelis conducts operations in ten different countries, employs around eleven thousand people, and reported US$17.1 billion in net sales for the most recent fiscal year.