Circularity is not a new idea. Throughout history humans have reused, repurposed or remade items into new things, driven by the value attached to materials and possessions. This practice has reflected human ingenuity in making the most of available resources.
Today, however, circularity can feel more like an aspiration than the default. According to the 2023 Circularity Gap Report, the UK is only 7.5% circular, meaning most materials entering the economy are still derived from virgin resources.
Much of this reflects the realities of modern supply chains. Global trade, price competitiveness and rising consumer demand have delivered efficiency and scale, but in doing so have often made it easier and cheaper to replace materials than to retain their value.
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Recycling has played an important role in countering this trend, with improvements in collection systems and recovery rates across many sectors. However, as environmental pressures intensify and supply chains come under strain, there is increasing discussion about whether recycling alone is sufficient.
Circularity helps us to go further. It is not just about collecting and reprocessing materials, but about keeping them in use at their highest possible value. This means preserving material quality, functionality and economic potential throughout its lifecycles.
Aluminium offers a useful example of this. In the UK, there are already established circularity loops that take advantage of aluminium’s high recyclability – from beverage cans being collected and remade into new cans within 60 days, to industrial scrap from automotive manufacturing processes being fed directly back into automotive production.
The challenge lies in prioritising circularity within existing economic systems. For aluminium, we believe at Novelis that circularity is most effective when different alloys and product types are kept separate, preserving their value and enabling them to be remade into like for like applications.
However, aluminium is a highly valuable material and where economic incentives favour lower processing requirements for export because the demand is higher overseas, the material’s value to the UK, both environmentally and economically, is lost.
For household aluminium, advancing circularity does not require a wholesale system change, but rather strengthening the parts of the system that already work well. Collection systems for items such as beverage cans are well established, but the next step is ensuring that aluminium is kept within high quality recycling loops (turning like products back into like products) and prioritising domestic circularity to keep economic value in the UK. Circularity is less about starting again and more about improving how materials flow through the existing system.
The transition from recycling to circularity also reflects a broader shift from managing waste to managing resources. It is not only an environmental objective, but also a way of thinking about efficiency, resilience and long-term value of materials.
The foundations for this change already exist; the challenge now is how to consistently apply them to ensure that what goes around comes back around with its value intact.
To learn more about Novelis’ circularity commitments, see our website here. If you want to learn more about our UK recycling capabilities and systems, please get in contact with our Metal Procurement team here: https://www.novelisrecycling.co.uk/
