Novelis showing progress on sustainability through “disruption”

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Aluminium rolling and recycling company Novelis has announced its progress in meetings its sustainability goals.

The company launched its Sustainability Through Disruptive Innovation third annual sustainability report that showed milestones including increasing its use of recycled content from 33 per cent to 43 per cent in the first two years of announcing its target to achieve 80 per cent recycled content by 2020. It also became the world’s largest recycler of aluminium this year through expanding its capacity.

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Novelis president and chief executive Phil Martens said: “Our intent when we established our sustainability targets two years ago was to transcend the incremental approach by radically transforming our company – and, in the process, lead the way in our industry.

“This approach is driving changes in the way we source inputs, structure our supply chain, make capital investments, develop our products and engage with our customers. We are still in the early stages of our sustainability journey, with many hurdles yet to overcome, but our efforts are already beginning to bear fruit.

“I am more firmly convinced than ever that our commitment to sustainability will be the key value driver for our company going forward.”

Highlights for Novelis in the report included:

  • A 19 per cent reduction in energy intensity, more than halfway to 39 per cent goal
  • A 16 per cent reduction in water intensity, more than halfway to 25 per cent goal
  • A 14 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, representing progress towards reaching its total goal of halving absolute emissions.

In the past year, Novelis also launched its evercan, which is the world’s first independently certified, high recycled content aluminium sheet.

It is also making progress towards half of its input being recycled content by 2015. It began operations last year at a new recycling facility in South Korea, which is the largest fully integrated beverage can recycling system in Asia, and it broke ground on a plant in Germany that will be the largest aluminium recycling facility in the world when complete in 2014.