The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the International Aluminium Institute (IAI) have announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the aluminium industry’s transition towards a circular economy. The collaboration brings together two complementary initiatives—WBCSD’s Critical Materials Collective and IAI’s Global Beverage Can Circularity Alliance (GBCCA), to drive meaningful progress in circular materials management, ensuring aluminium remains a key enabler of sustainability and decarbonisation.
Their joint efforts will strengthen the voice of aluminium producers and consumers, focusing on improving collection systems, enabling closed-loop recycling, designing products for recycling, preventing downcycling, and maximising high-quality recycling across the aluminium value chain.
Collaborating for Impact
“Although 75% of all aluminium ever produced remains in use, 71% of mixed scrap is downcycled, limiting its potential for reuse in high-performance applications,” said Quentin Drewell, Senior Director of Circular Products and Materials at WBCSD.
“By combining the GBCCA’s leadership in beverage can recovery with WBCSD’s Critical Materials Collective, we can unlock high-quality secondary materials, reducing energy by up to 95% compared to primary aluminium. Together, our aligned efforts and cross-value chain expertise can scale closed-loop systems, reduce waste, and accelerate global decarbonisation,” he added.
Through this partnership, the GBCCA will concentrate on enhancing the collection of aluminium beverage cans, while the Critical Materials Collective will work to increase the recovery of high-quality aluminium scrap, ensuring valuable material is not lost to downcycling. This joint initiative brings together two historically separate objectives, increasing recycling rates and boosting recycled content, into a unified strategy. By aligning these efforts, the partnership seeks to foster true cross-sector collaboration and deliver meaningful, structural change across the aluminium value chain.
These coordinated efforts are critical in addressing the growing imbalance between supply and demand for sorted aluminium scrap, which is projected to reach 60 million tonnes by 2050.
At the same time, they aim to tackle the anticipated surplus of 19 million tonnes of unsorted scrap, ensuring more material is efficiently recovered and reused.
“Each year, approximately 7 million tonnes of aluminium scrap are lost from the recycling cycle, with at least 6 million tonnes being unsorted and downcycled,” said Marlen Bertram, IAI’s Director of Forecasts and Scenarios.
“Increasing recycling rates and strengthening closed-loop systems are critical to meeting the growing global demand for aluminium in a truly sustainable manner,” She added.
Both alliances are committed to advocating for policies that support a circular economy, promoting closed-loop recycling systems, and enhancing the environmental performance of the aluminium sector worldwide.
Industry Support
Backed by leading industry players and more than twenty-five WBCSD member companies, this collaboration signals strong momentum across sectors to build more resilient, high-quality, low-carbon material supply chains. This partnership represents a significant milestone in the aluminium industry’s transition towards circularity, demonstrating how collective action can drive tangible progress in sustainable materials management.
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About the International Aluminium Institute
The International Aluminium Institute (IAI) is the only body representing the global primary aluminium industry. The Institute has the most comprehensive global data on Aluminium with more than 50 years of analysis on production, consumption, energy use and environmental impact. For more information, visit www.international-aluminium.org, or connect with us on X and LinkedIn.
About the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a global community of over 240 of the world’s leading businesses driving systems transformation for a better world in which 9+ billion people can live well, within planetary boundaries, by mid-century. Together, we transform the systems we work in to limit the impact of the climate crisis, restore nature and tackle inequality.
We accelerate value chain transformation across key sectors and reshape the financial system to reward sustainable leadership and action through a lower cost of capital. Through the exchange of best practices, improving performance, accessing education, forming partnerships, and shaping the policy agenda, we drive progress in businesses and sharpen the accountability of their performance.
Follow us on LinkedIn. www.wbcsd.org
