Uddeholm Real Actions
The best raw material is the material that is recycled over and over again. A circular economy is the exact opposite of a linear economy. Instead of manufacturing, purchasing and scrapping items, everything that has been manufactured is used for as long as possible. When the items are eventually spent, as much as possible is reused and recycled. A circular economy is based on circularity, which involves optimising economic and environmental values, primarily by reusing materials, but also recycling them.
Steel forms part of a cycle in which just about everything can be recycled. In the case of scrap-based manufacture, scrap that has been discarded in an earlier stage is reused. Around a third of the world’s steel production is based on recycling and scrap-based processes. Electric arc furnaces, which require electric energy, are primarily used to melt the steel scrap. When using scrap as the raw material, the specific energy consumption, calculated in kWh per tonne of produced steel, is only one-fifth of that required for ore-based steel manufacture.
But we are not only good at our core business (based on recycling). The production process gives rise to almost 30,000 tonnes of waste products. Most of the falling waste products such as slag, brick and oxide scale are reused. Only a small part goes to landfill.