Why focus on green aluminium
In the new editorial for A&L Alluminio e Leghe, FACE Secretary General Mario Conserva talks about green aluminium. When we talk about “green”, we are referring to many aspects of eco-sustainability that puts aluminium in first place among other materials of industrial use for the realisation of the circular economy cycle.
Aluminium needs energy to be produced, like other materials, but it has an extra edge because it can be recovered and put back into the cycle without losing its characteristics, and for this reason only 5% of the energy produced at the beginning of the cycle is needed.
Metal from recycling currently covers over 30% of global needs and is expected to reach even over 50% by 2050; at European level, recovered metal already covers over 35% of needs and in Italy we are at 50%.
But aluminium is not only green because it is easy to recycle: for some years now, initiatives have been developed by major primary producers to differentiate it according to its CO2 footprint, which in turn depends on the technical characteristics of the production plant and the type of electricity used.
It is in everyone’s interest to promote the most virtuous technologies and products, rewarding both the development of recycling and the influx of virtuous metal with a low CO2 footprint in Europe, which has a serious production shortage of primary aluminium and has so far been unable to develop a serious proposal on the energy plan to stop the closure and delocalisation of smelters out of the EU.
Here the editorial by our Secretary General for the magazine A&L: https://www.calameo.com/publitec/read/007274363bfb491ab59ce