Driving the Circular Economy

The Role of Aluminum Recycling
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Recycling is the cornerstone of Novelis’ purpose-driven commitment to sustainable manufacturing and carbon reduction. As the world leader in aluminum recycling, Novelis is at the center of the circular economy for aluminum with one of the industry’s highest percentages of recycled content in our products. This helps our customers achieve their sustainability goals and provides consumers the environmentally friendly products they desire.

Our company has been on the journey to increase recycled content for more than a decade and has made great strides, going from 30% to 63% in our last fiscal year. But we’re not stopping there. To reach our 2030 goal of 75% we will have to work faster and harder. Our focus on recycled content is directly tied to our goal to reduce our carbon intensity to 3 tonnes of CO2e per tonne of flat rolled product shipped and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. We are playing a critical role in scaling circularity and decarbonizing our industry, advancing the long-term decarbonization goals of our customers.

Novelis is the largest, most technologically advanced recycler of aluminum in the world. Across four continents, we recycled 2.4 million tonnes of aluminum during our last fiscal year.

Our Recycling Commitments

The world is moving fast on the topic of sustainability, and in particular carbon and circularity, and we need to move faster. To maintain our sustainability leadership and deliver the low-carbon solutions our customers need, we launched Novelis 3×30, an initiative that will focus our entire company to achieve ambitious goals for increasing recycled content and reducing carbon intensity.

Novelis will:

  • Push the boundaries by setting a target of 75% recycled content in our products.
  • Maximize our recycling capacity and invest in technologies that will enable us to expand the types of aluminum scrap we use.
  • Create new closed-loop recycling partnerships with our customers to ensure we bring aluminum scrap from their processes back into its highest value uses.
  • Innovate new alloys that allow for increased use of recycled content and develop advanced sorting technologies to prepare for end-of-life automotive aluminum recycling as new aluminum-intensive vehicles reach their consumer use limits.
  • Actively collaborate with our customers, suppliers, partners and consumers around the globe to increase recycling rates, particularly in the U.S.

The innovative, high-recycled-content alloys we’ve brought to market over the past decade have enabled us to more than double the amount of recycled aluminum in our products, reaching an average of 63 percent recycled content at the end of our 2025 fiscal year.

Keeping Aluminum “In the Loop”

As the world’s largest aluminum recycler, we have a unique role to play in the aluminum value chain. We know that keeping aluminum “in the loop” by  is the best way for our industry to decarbonize.

We are committed to ensuring that this valuable material is continuously recaptured and reused, rather than ending up in landfills or being downcycled into lower-value applications.

This approach preserves aluminum’s full potential and inherent value, allowing it to be recycled repeatedly while supporting a circular economy and reducing environmental impact.

Novelis operates eight dedicated aluminum recycling centers in North America, Europe, Asia, and South America, as well as integrated recycling operations at nine of our aluminum rolling plants worldwide.

Why Recycle Aluminum

As one of the most sustainable materials in the world, aluminum is 100% recyclable and can be recycled repeatedly without degrading its inherent value, making it ideally suited for the circular economy.

Nearly 75% of all aluminum ever produced is still in use today.

Recycling aluminum requires only 5% of the energy used to produce primary aluminum.

Recycling generates roughly 95% fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

End-of-Life Recycling

A Showcase for Circular Packaging

Aluminum beverage cans and bottles are some of the most prevalent sources of end-of-life recycled aluminum and offer a textbook example of the benefits recycled aluminum delivers in creating a circular economy.

  • Aluminum cans have a higher recycling rate and contain much more recycled content than any other beverage container.
  • Aluminum cans are far more valuable than glass or plastic, helping make municipal recycling programs financially viable (https://www.aluminum.org/Recycling).

Advantage of End-of-Life Recycling

End-of-life recycling offers great advantages, as closing the loop for post-consumer scrap preserves the value of aluminum, helps protect natural resources, and creates a secure supply chain.

  • Building a circular economy with aluminum is a focus for Novelis and returning end-of-life scrap to its source is key to reducing the need for raw material.
  • To help the automotive industry reduce carbon emissions and ultimately achieve carbon neutrality, as well as reduce waste and preserve natural resources, Novelis works in partnership with automakers and other stakeholders across the automotive value chain to create and implement customized circular economy programs.
  • Collection, dismantling, sorting, and scrap preparation are critical steps for circularity. While these steps are carried out across the value chain, Novelis leads the way by working closely with customers on design‑for‑recycling: enabling easier separation, higher scrap quality, and true closed‑loop aluminum recycling.

Production Closed-Loop Recycling

Closed-loop recycling allows us to take back as much of the aluminum scrap created by our customers’ production processes as possible, turning it directly back into the same product over and over.

Keeping production scrap in the loop preserves the value of the alloy, reduces transportation costs, minimizes environmental impact, and establishes a more secure supply chain.

The Novelis Global Recycling Footprint

Novelis operates eight dedicated aluminum recycling centers in North America, Europe, Asia and South America, as well as integrated recycling operations at nine of our aluminum rolling plants worldwide.

Nachterstedt, Germany

The Novelis recycling center located in Nachterstedt, Germany, is the largest aluminum recycling operation in Europe.

Latchford, UK

Our Latchford recycling center is Europe’s largest used aluminum beverage can recycling plant and Europe’s largest closed-loop recycling operation for automotive aluminum rolled products.

Yeongju, South Korea

Our recycling center in Yeongju is Asia’s largest aluminum used beverage can recycling facility. Since its opening in 2012, it has processed more than 120 billion used beverage cans.

Ulsan, South Korea

Ulsan aluminum recycling center, which is part of the Ulsan Aluminum joint venture, processes a wide range of aluminum scrap to produce low-carbon aluminum sheet ingot.

Greensboro, Georgia, USA

Novelis operates a stand-alone, dedicated recycling facility in Greensboro, Georgia. This site is also where we pioneer many of our new recycling technologies.

Berea, Kentucky, USA

Our recycling center in Berea, Kentucky, is one of the world’s largest plants dedicated to aluminum beverage can recycling, taking in approximately 20 percent of the United States’ used aluminum beverage cans, melting them down and producing aluminum sheet ingots for our North American operations.

Guthrie, Kentucky, USA

In Guthrie, Kentucky, Novelis operations a highly advanced recycling center for automotive customers that enables more closed-loop recycling programs in North America. The facility includes capabilities to process aluminum from vehicles at the end of their lifecycle.

Pindamonhangaba, Brazil

Our Pinda Recycling Center in Brazil is the largest recycling facility in South America.

Novelis also has recycling operations in the following plants:

  • North America: Oswego, New York; Uhrichsville, Ohio; Davenport, Iowa; Russellville, Kentucky
  • Europe: Pieve, Italy; Sierre, Switzerland; Voerde, Germany; Neuss, Germany

Recycling Success Stories