Altogether more sustainable

Constellium, with corporate offices in Paris, designs and manufactures aluminum products and components for a global customer base that includes the aerospace, automotive, construction, packaging, renewable energy and transportation sectors. The company operates 23 production facilities, 10 administrative and commercial sites and a technology center.

Catherine Athènes serves as sustainability council leader and marketing director, packaging and automotive rolled products, at Constellium. Having joined Constellium in 2011, she has more than 20 years of international experience in marketing, sales and sustainability.

Athènes led the creation of the company’s sustainability council and spearheaded the production of its first sustainability report in 2013.

While Constellium asserts that it is committed to recycling and sustainability, Athènes says the amount of recycled content in a given product “can be misleading and even counterproductive to real progress in aluminum recycling.”

In the Q&A that follows, she provides additional insight into why Constellium believes recycled content is the wrong incentive and the importance of obsolete scrap in reducing aluminum’s environmental footprint.

Recycling Today (RT): Why is recycled content the wrong incentive when it comes to aluminum? Why do you contend that this incentive works better for paper and plastics?

Catherine Athènes (CA): What works for metal and particularly aluminum does not necessarily work for other materials, such as plastic and paper.

Plastic and paper lose their properties after recycling, and the value of their scrap is low, and recycling is expensive. Aluminum, on the other end, keeps its properties after recycling and cannot be distinguished from virgin metal.

Individual recycling targets are good as long as they contribute to increasing recycling globally. What we question as a company is when industry players focus solely on individual recycled content targets. Because of the limited availability of secondary aluminum globally, increasing the recycled content of one product simply diverts recycled metal from elsewhere, creating no net environmental benefit. In that sense, industry efforts would better be focused on improving the scrap collection process to enhance the overall volume of scrap content needed for recycling and improve the environmental footprint of the entire aluminum value chain.

RT: Why is end-of-life scrap more important than process scrap for reducing aluminum’s environmental footprint?

CA: Aluminum scrap comes from processes along the production chain at our facilities or during product manufacturing at our customers’ sites. This scrap is called runaround scrap, and its recycling is essential due to its cleanliness and value.

End-of-life scrap, on the other hand, comes from a product after its life cycle. If recycled, it avoids using primary metal for the production of the next product and offers CO2 (carbon dioxide) [reduction] benefits. Recycling existing aluminum products requires 5 percent of the energy that would have been used otherwise to produce primary metal.

From an environmental point of view, end-of-life recycling is the most efficient way to significantly improve the CO2 footprint of aluminum.

At Constellium, our goal is to increase the recycling of end-of-life products. We are dedicated to the creation of better closed loops and improving the sustainability of the whole supply chain.

RT: How much recycled content in the aluminum industry is currently derived from process scrap? End-of-life scrap?

CA: There is a strong focus today on increasing the percentage of recycled content in the composition of products.

At Constellium we believe this is not the adequate path to follow if we want to progress on sustainability. Recycled content can work only if there is enough availability of aluminum scrap throughout all sectors, which is not the case today and in the near future. Recycled content often includes a major contribution from process scrap, whose higher percentage does not equate to environmental benefits. We believe the best way to measure progress in recycling is to measure how much recycling happens at the end of the product’s life.

Currently end-of-life recycling of aluminum products is very good, with a recycling rate of up to 95 percent in [the] automotive and transportation and in [the] building [sectors]. As for packaging, a lot of progress has been made, but efforts are still needed, with the recycling rate of beverage cans of 69.5 percent in Europe.

There is a margin to do better through scrap collection and sorting by working in collaboration within and outside the aluminum industry. Through this approach, the overall aluminum scrap volume will increase.

RT: What is the Aluminum Stewardship Initiative? Which parties are involved? What are the initiative’s goals?

CA: Constellium is an early member of the Aluminum Stewardship Initiative (ASI), a unique value chain program that has delivered the first voluntary standard for the responsible production, stewardship and use of aluminum across the value chain.

This standard was developed through a multistakeholder consultation process involving not only the industry but also experts and representatives of civil society.

We at Constellium have been particularly involved in defining material stewardship, one of the standard’s principles, which is specific to the aluminum value chain considering the infinite recyclability of aluminum and the benefits of recycling.

With our long-standing commitment to enhancing the sustainability of our operations, we see this new ASI standard as a natural extension of our own sustainability efforts.

Aluminum companies and other industry players interested in joining can download a membership form on the ASI website at http://aluminum-stewardship.org.

RT: How can scrap collection be improved? Is there one sector where scrap collection lags considerably?

CA: The main challenge resides in scrap availability. Given the long life span of many aluminum applications, such as buildings and transport vehicles, the available quantity of end-of-life aluminum scrap today is limited to what came on the market many years ago. This, combined with market growth, makes it impossible for recycling alone to feed current demand. Collection and recycling of end-of-life products is therefore crucial to enhance the overall volume of available recycled aluminum.

To improve scrap collection, it is necessary to collaborate with all relevant stakeholders from industry to associations and local authorities. This is particularly important for recycling in the packaging industry, which has greatly improved but still needs work to avoid landfilling. We have to create better closed loops.

The industry also has to work at improving the sustainability of the entire value chain through the building of standards, such as the one defined by the Aluminum Stewardship Initiative (ASI).

RT: How can recyclers and aluminum producers further work to close the loop for different aluminum products? Which sectors do a better job of this than others?

CA: Industry players should focus on full life cycle recycling and scrap collection instead of going for the inadequate solution of recycled content. We believe that the emphasis should be on improving the recycled scrap collection process to enhance the overall volume of available content rather than just focusing on the content of individual products alone.

As an industry player, Constellium is committed to developing new and more scrap-tolerant alloys and to working together with customers and other stakeholders to boost collection and sorting.

Just to give you a few examples, we participate in CR3—Center for Resource Recovery and Recycling—a U.S.-based program aimed at improving recycling processes through better sorting, metal composition analysis and conditioning of scrap. We work also with Metal Packaging Europe to advocate for metals to be classified as permanent materials and for the use of relevant recycling metrics.

We also work on creating better closed loops. Today the product which is very much used back in its original function is the beverage can. However, we should not forget that the best recycling results will come also with the most efficient recycling streams, which may not always be product closed loops.

“To improve scrap collection, it is necessary to collaborate with all relevant stakeholders from industry to associations and local authorities.”

RT: What would you like to see developed in terms of recycling standards?

CA: Constellium endorses the ASI’s new global sustainability standard for the aluminum industry, a truly groundbreaking approach including a chain of custody, which directly links sustainable practices to the end products used by businesses and consumers. Once implemented, it will allow industry participants to certify the compliance of their environmental performance, social responsibility and governance practices to the standard’s principles and criteria through a third party certification system. The new voluntary standard will also enable the industry to better respond to growing customer and consumer demand for greater sustainability throughout the value chain.

One of the standard’s principles is the material stewardship aspect, which is specific to the aluminum value chain considering the infinite recyclability of aluminum and the benefits of recycling.

Constellium has a long-standing commitment to enhancing the sustainability of its operations and issued its first sustainability report in 2013 with key commitments and targets.

Catherine Athènes serves as sustainability council leader and marketing director, packaging and automotive rolled products, at Constellium, www.constellium.com, with corporate headquarters in Paris.