The company says the investment enables more than 50 billion cartons to be recycled per year.
Tetra Pak, a food packaging manufacturer based in Lund, Sweden, has announced plans to invest in four recycling facilities in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Australia. Once operational, the sites are expected to recycle up to 45,000 metric tons of postconsumer cartons annually.
According to a news release from Tetra Pak, the company has co-invested more than 11.5 million euros to help set up the facilities. The money will go to building recycling capacity via cross-border cooperation in Saudi Arabia, expanding that capacity by 50 percent in Turkey, tripling the production capacity for the carton's PolyAl element in Ukraine and leveraging a public/ private partnership in Australia.
The company says these projects will enable the recycling of all components of a used carton, transforming them into quality materials and goods. Once fully operational, the new solutions will process up to an additional 45,000 metric tons of used cartons, enabling global carton package recycling to exceed 50 billion units per year.
“Carton packages are recycled across the globe, where efficient waste management and recycling infrastructures are in place,” says Tatiana Liceti, executive vice president for market operations at Tetra Pak. “Accelerating this requires all stakeholders to play an active role, including governments, local authorities, producers and consumers. Sustainability is one of the top three priorities for our customers, and these new facilities will help contribute towards meeting their goals.”
According to the Tetra Pak Index, about 50 percent of consumers are likely to recycle more this year as part of their contribution to tackling climate change. In addition, when asked who should find solutions to environmental and waste issues, consumers rank packaging companies third, behind food and beverage brands and governments.
“With more time being spent at home due to COVID-19 restrictions, the household waste ‘footprint’ is more visible,” says Lars Holmquist, executive vice president for sustainability and communications at Tetra Pak. “In a bid to address this, consumers are adapting their daily routines and taking greater action. We are helping them on this journey by raising awareness on how they can actively help recycle, while co-investing in expanding recycling capacity and developing innovative technologies so that postconsumer carton packages can be reintroduced into the economy.”
The company plans to expand low carbon aluminum production, reducing emissions by 420,000 tons a year.
Novelis Inc., Atlanta, has announced plans to invest about $50 million to build a recycling center at its Ulsan Aluminum joint venture in South Korea. The company says it expects the recycling center to reduce the company's carbon emissions by more than 420,000 tons each year.
According to a news release from Novelis, construction of the Ulsan Recycling Center is expected to begin in October, with commissioning expected in early 2024.
"The establishment of the Ulsan Aluminum Recycling Center is an important investment to help us achieve our ambition of becoming the world's leading provider of sustainable, low-carbon aluminum solutions," says Sachin Satpute, executive vice president of Novelis. "By increasing the use of recycled content, we are committed to reducing our carbon footprint as well as that of our customers and the broader industry, and accelerating aluminum's transition to a fully circular economy."
Novelis says it is making this investment in additional recycling capacity to meet the growing global demand for sustainable aluminum products. In January, the company announced it would build a new U.S. recycling center in Guthrie, Kentucky.
"Newsweek" publishes essay from California-based electronics recycling executive.
The co-founder of one of the largest electronics recycling companies in the United States has urged America to take battery recycling more seriously if it is genuinely committed to putting a ceiling on carbon dioxide (CO2) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The essay by John Shegerian of Fresno, California-based ERI Inc. was published on the Newsweek.com website in mid-February. “As we tackle one source of environmental degradation, we could sleepwalk into another,” warns Shegerian to readers who may favor the use of electric vehicles (EVs) but may not be aware of the “flood of retired EV batteries [that] is heading toward us.”
Pointing to cardboard as an example of a material with a high recycling rate, Shegerian says a similar type of campaign that boosted paper recycling is needed for batteries.
The ERI executive also mentions the fire hazards of discarded lithium-ion batteries and refers to them as “100 percent recyclable” if the effort is made.
Shegerian also refers to the economic opportunities involved in recycling the metals found in such batteries and points out that Tesla co-founder JD Straubel is among those making investments in the growing recycling sector. He also urges states without battery regulation frameworks to begin considering such measures.
The John Shegerian Newsweek op-ed can be found on this web page.
Company’s CEO cites increased use of scrap and HBI as leading to less need for the furnace.
Steel producer Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. says it will indefinitely idle its Indiana Harbor No. 4 blast furnace in East Chicago, Indiana. The blast furnace, one of eight the Cleveland-based company operates, is part of the larger Indiana Harbor Works blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace (BOF) integrated steelmaking complex.
Cleveland-Cliffs states, “This action is a result of the successful implementation of operational improvements, particularly the addition of significant amounts of HBI [hot briquetted iron] to the burden of blast furnaces and the maximization of scrap usage in BOFs.”
In 2021, Cleveland-Cliffs purchased Detroit-based Ferrous Processing & Trading and its network of scrap yards in part to improve its access to ferrous scrap. In the company’s most recent conference call with analysts, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves indicated the firm may no longer need as much blast furnace capacity, and in the future may even add a scrap and HBI-fed electric arc furnace.
The company says employees allocated to idled blast furnace will be reassigned to other positions within Indiana Harbor Works and it will “continue normal operations of the entire Indiana Harbor Works, including its two steel shops, the hot strip mill and all its finishing facilities, as well as the nearby Riverdale [Illinois] Works.”
Goncalves says, “Our strategy of increasing productivity at our ironmaking and steelmaking facilities through the use of both in-house produced HBI and additional scrap has allowed us to reduce coke rate and consequently reduce CO2 emissions, as well as to stretch hot metal utilization and still be able to produce similar amounts of crude steel with fewer blast furnaces.”
Goncalves says the move allows the company to reduce its carbon footprint while “at the same time, lowering our cost structure for the same level of steel production and shipments.”
Lucky Group co-founder helped Middle East scrap processing and trading firm create its large regional presence.
Mohammed Iqbal Shaban, president and co-founder of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based Lucky Group, died Feb. 10 in Dubai.
“He will forever stay in our hearts. May Almighty rest the departed soul in peace and grant him eternal place in heaven,” reads an announcement sent by Lucky Group via email in late February.
Iqbal was the younger brother of co-founder Dilawar Shaban, who served as the company’s board chair until his death in 2016.
The Shaban brothers founded Lucky Group in 1973 after they committed to a future in nonferrous scrap trading and processing after trying several entrepreneurial ideas.
By 2011, when the firm was profiled by Recycling Today, several Shaban family members were involved in the company. At that time, it had processing locations or trading offices in the UAE (including a secondary aluminum alloys plant), Qatar and Canada and a liaison office in Shanghai.
Condolence messages to the family can be sent to family@shaban.com.