The aluminium industry’s sustainability journey in August 2025 has been exciting as ever. From the bustling can recycling networks of Brazil to futuristic waste conversion experiments on the Moon, and from India’s pandal aesthetics to Europe’s policy battles, the past month have shown how recycling and energy transitions are shaping the sector’s long-term narrative.
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Brazil: still the world’s recycling poster child
Brazil has long worn the crown as the world’s aluminium can recycling champion. And even though the country saw a slight dip (2.7 per cent down in 2024), its recovery rate still stayed comfortably above 95 per cent. That’s fifteen years of near-perfect performance, showing how deeply recycling is embedded in Brazilian culture. For most countries struggling to cross even half that mark, Brazil’s “slip” looks more like a masterclass in consistency (full story here).
Recycling on the Moon? Yes, NASA is trying It
From beer cans in Brazil to space junk on the Moon: the contrast couldn’t be sharper. NASA is working on ways to recycle mission waste into tools, spare parts, and other essentials that astronauts might need on long lunar stays. The idea is simple: you can’t pack everything from Earth, so why not make the Moon itself a recycling lab? It’s a fascinating step that could change how humans live beyond Earth, while giving us fresh ideas for recycling smarter back home (read more).
India’s festival twist
Back on Earth, and especially in India’s Steel City of Jamshedpur, aluminium is about to make another festive debut. For the 2025 Durga Puja, organisers are putting up a pandal (a temporary festival structure) built with aluminium instead of traditional materials. Why aluminium? It’s light, strong, and infinitely recyclable. The pandal will not just be a spectacle for devotees but also a statement on how cultural traditions can embrace sustainability without losing their magic (details here).
Europe builds systems, guards resources
In Germany, recycling got a serious boost with the launch of a flagship bottom ash recycling facility in Magdeburg. The plant will extract valuable metals and minerals from incineration ash — a step toward ensuring that nothing useful ends up wasted (story here).
But Europe has another problem of too much aluminium scrap flowing out to the United States. For stakeholders in Brussels, it is about losing valuable raw material that could have fed local recyclers. Retaliation measures are being discussed, showing how recycling is as much about geopolitics as it is about green goals (read how).
The US looks to be aluminium-rich, but recycling-poor
Across the Atlantic, America has plenty of aluminium but not enough ways to recycle it. Facilities are lagging, creating a strange imbalance: a resource-rich country short on processing power. One proposed fix is the Benson aluminium recycling project (project update), which just wrapped up its public comment period. If approved, it could add much-needed capacity, but the bigger question is whether the U.S. can scale up fast enough to match its growing aluminium appetite (coverage here).
India is balancing between growth vs green energy
India finds itself on a tightrope. On one side, it wants to ramp up aluminium production to fuel infrastructure and export ambitions. On the other, it has strict renewable energy targets that demand cleaner power. Can both goals run in parallel? That’s the million-dollar question policy makers and producers are wrestling with (story here).
The market isn’t making it easier. Imported aluminium scrap prices fell in India even as global prices on the LME ticked higher — a reminder that local and global markets don’t always move in sync (press release).
China’s fast-track to renewables
China, meanwhile, is pressing the fast-forward button. It has moved up its renewable energy marketisation target by five years, aiming for 30 per cent electrification by 2030. The signal is clear: aluminium production must grow, but it has to be powered more by clean energy than coal (press release).
China’s story connects with a larger industry debate of whether aluminium’s carbon footprint is less about smelting technology and more about the energy grid behind it. If your grid runs on coal, aluminium stays “dirty.” If it runs on renewables, the metal feels like the green champion it’s targeted to be (analysis here).
Put together, these stories show aluminium’s double life, one encapsulating everyday and the other resonating extraordinarily. It’s in Brazilian recycling bins, Indian festival pandals, German ash plants and at the same time, it’s being tested on the Moon. Aluminium’s future scalability depends less on whether we recycle and more on how well each region builds the systems to make recycling and renewable energy work together.