BRAZILIAN ALUMINUM - solutions for sustainable living

BRAZILIAN ALUMINUM SOLUTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING 57 RECYCLING: BEYOND THE OBVIOUS In order to offer such alternatives to the market, the companies have carried out emission inventories and received third-party certifications, assuring to customers that the information is accurate. Seeing it from a systemic perspective, the economic activity for recycling in Brazil would deserve a more equitable tax structure in place, which should take all massive benefits it brings into account. That does rely on the efforts ABAL has devoted to interact with tax authorities, aiming to grab their awareness about the matter and have them turn the current context around, as it involves a tax burden over the entire chain, hence impacting on final products and encouraging informal practices. Another relevant fact is the carbon leakage that occurs when aluminum products imported from countries which have carbon footprints bigger than those for the products made in our country land here, without providing that information to customers. That issue could be minimized by defining a global carbon pricing along with a proper labeling system. Measuring recycling ABAL has published two recycling indicators on a yearly basis. They are:  the recycling rate for aluminum beverage cans, which in 2015 reached 97.9%, thereby sustaining Brazil’s leading standing in global ranking for over a decade;  the indicator of ratio between recovered scrap and domestic consumption of aluminumproducts, which achieved 46% in 2015 and remained far above the world average of 27%. The fact that 75% of the entire aluminum produced is still in use helps figure out how limited that indicator is, which then may lead to a potentially-vague finding that 54% of that aluminum has not been recycled. Finding out the recycling rates and the average recycled volume for each aluminum product, so as to allow their related carbon footprint is assessed is needed. It would require hard-working efforts to devise amass flow template able tomonitor and obtain those indicators, which is not yet available. Recycled aluminum content In early April, the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT) published the standard ABNT NBR 16598: 2017- Aluminum and its alloys - Definitions and Calculation methods for defining recycled content in extruded, flat-rolled and cast products . The new standard shall be a critical tool for buildings seeking some certification like the seal LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), for example, which is aimed at sustainable enterprises, involving both the use of natural resources, the use of solar power, natural ventilation and other aspects that reduce ecological impacts. It will enable standardize those definitions for boundaries in process flows, by determining the generation of three types of metal waste that are: Run Around Scrap (RAS), pre-consumer recyclable material and post- consumer recyclable material. The standard also comprises self-declaration models of aluminum recycled conten.