Circularity is essential to make the most of the planet’s resources

The Importance of Circularity in Resource Management

Circularity is essential to make the most of the planet’s resources. That is why many political and business leaders see it as an integral tool to achieve climate neutrality by 2050.

I would like to draw a parallel between how we are approaching circularity now and the previous efforts that have focused on curbing CO2 emissions. Today, society is making major progress to cut the greenhouse gases that influence climate change. However, this is thanks to legislation that dates back some 20 years such as the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Although it was initially questioned, it is now clear that the ETS system has been a key driver for a global change in energy strategy over the long term, by starting to put a price on CO2 emissions.

Today, we’re facing a similar challenge with circularity, how to promote and incentivise an increasing ratio of circularity in our society. To protect natural resources, there needs to be a clear and clearly understood value in recovering and reusing our raw materials. This will establish the sound business logic for wider adoption of circularity.

It’s possible that the journey will require 5, 10 or 15 years for industry to adjust, making it all the more important to start the transformation now. Progress will require growth in demand for circularity from customers, as well as transparency within the supply chains. But the end goal is a better world.

Want to discover more about Ovako's circularity...

Find out more

Influencing the future via the Swedish Delegation for the Circular Economy

In October 2023, I joined the Delegation for the Circular Economy. This is an advisory body to the Swedish government that has the goal of driving towards a more circular economy while boosting Swedish competitiveness.

The body works closely with policymakers to raise awareness of good practice in circularity through events and sharing news from its network, as well as publicising opportunities to access funding.

My contribution is to work alongside leaders from Swedish industry, government and academia, including global businesses such as Coca Cola and Polestar. We all have interesting perspectives to share. It’s an opportunity to influence the development of policy and discuss the challenges, opportunities and best practice in terms of the circular economy and find new ways to incentivise industry to reuse and recycle.

Partnership working

At Ovako, our approach to circularity focuses on recycling. Our steel already today contains 97 percent recycled content, making our products almost completely circular. Although one can say we use steel scrap as a raw material, we prefer to think and talk about it as recycled steel, a critical input material for climate efficient steel production today.

It takes much less energy to recycle existing materials than it does to process virgin raw materials, so reusing existing resources is also a good way to reduce CO2 emissions – in steelmaking it is possible to reduce emissions by over 80 percent by doing this.

The key to maximizing the value from recycled materials is to protect quality through sorting. We have over 15 separate streams of steel for recycling. Each of these has different alloying content and other attributes, making it suitable for remelting into various steel grades.

Efficient recycling is an approach that we’ve worked hard to develop together with suppliers and customers over many years. This will be a topic at the Underhållsmässan trade show in Gothenburg, Sweden, where Ovako will be taking part in a panel discussion with SKF and Stena Recycling about how our companies work together to achieve both high business and environmental value through circularity.