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Home > Sustainability > The World’s Largest Recycler of Aluminum
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% today, which is a huge accomplishment. But we’re not stopping there. To reach our 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 4.3 million tonnes of aluminum during our last fiscal year.
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.
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.
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.
End-of-life recycling in the automotive industry also offers great advantages, as closing the loop preserves the value of the alloy, minimizes environmental impact, and creates a secure supply chain.
Closed-loop recycling allows us to take back as much of the aluminum created by our customers’ production processes as possible, turning it directly back into the same product over and over.
Another example of the innovative closed-loop recycling systems Novelis has created to drive the circular economy is our partnership with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). Novelis efficiently delivers aluminum from our rolling and finishing facilities in Germany and Switzerland to JLR’s automotive production site in the United Kingdom via a dedicated railway service. From there, the excess aluminum scrap collected from the manufacturing process is then transported back to Novelis’ rolling facilities and remelted into the same automotive aluminum – in essence, closing the loop. This rail transport system enables us to reduce carbon equivalent emissions of our supply chain by 80% compared to standard over-the-road transport.
Nachterstedt, Germany The Novelis recycling center located in Nachterstedt, Germany, is the largest aluminum recycling operation in the world.
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.
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: