Growing material requirements and tightening material availabilities and a legislative environment change the dynamics for recycling.

Abstract:

Governments are starting to notice the real issues around material availability and the criticality of some metals that are byproducts of mined materials and have an inelastic supply pattern as well as being used in the highly consumer popular high-tech applications.Industry is also starting to pay attention to the positive economic benefits of having a sustainability policy in place as Umicore can demonstrate. Ten years ago, Umicore made fundamental choices by concentrating on two activities, i.e. the development of high quality materials with extensive technology content and the recycling of precious and rare metals, which form the basis of many of these high-tech materials. As the materials provider for rechargeable batteries, catalytic converters, solar cells and other high tech applications and as the recycler of end-of-life materials from these same technologies, Umicore has been able to illustrate and effectively close the material loop. Today, over half of Umicore turnover and profits is derived from this wide range of Clean Technologies. This illustrates the success sustainability as a strategy is having for Umicore.

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