FACE welcomes the Sustainable Products Initiative

FACE supports the EU Green Deal and warmly welcomes the Sustainable Products initiative. This proposal aligns with FACE green ambition by incentivizing businesses and industries to place more sustainable products on the EU market.

The Sustainable Products initiative, which will revise the Ecodesign Directive and propose additional legislative measures as appropriate, aims to make products placed on the EU market more sustainable. Consumers, the environment and the climate will benefit from products that are more durable, reusable, repairable, recyclable, and energy-efficient. The initiative will also address the presence of harmful chemicals in products such as: electronics & ICT equipment, textiles, furniture, steel, cement & chemicals.

Sustainability and the green transition have always been at the core of FACE’s advocacy. As such, FACE has long called for the creation of a “green” label within the primary aluminium industry.

Our industry is ambitiously stepping-up all efforts in this direction:

In July 2020, EN+ Group announced its ‘Green Aluminium Vision’ (GAV), which sat out the Group’ proposals for a low carbon economy and for a new asset class of ‘Green Aluminium’. And later on, in October 2020, Hydro introduced its “Hydro EcoDesign”, which mirrors the EU Ecodesign and Energy Labelling, aimed at helping customers to develop more sustainable and circular aluminium products.

The aluminium industry is energy-intensive, and FACE prompts EU companies to increase their commitments, innovation, drive and investments to make the light metal a major contributor to the transition towards the green economy.

Aluminium has a tremendous potential for becoming the material of a carbon-neutral world. Its lightness and infinite recyclability contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of entire value chains, and to scaling up the circular economy model.

However, most of the Aluminium CO₂ emission happens during the early stages of production: mining of bauxites ore, refining of alumina, and smelting of primary aluminium. Consequently, the aluminium industry generates two per cent of our planet’s CO2 emissions.

As social demand and NGO’s are on the rise for climate action and more environmentally friendly products, governments and businesses must profoundly and vigorously change their behaviors.

Thus, it is now vital for the aluminium industry to strive towards the decarbonization of aluminium production, from sustainable mining to ‘low-carbon’ and carbon-free smelting, and to the lowest total carbon footprint for product manufacturing.

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