Rusal processed and sold about 50% of its smelters’ waste in last 10 years

RUSAL has demonstrated its commitment towards sustainability by processing and selling over 50% of the waste generated by its smelters in the last 10 years. Rusal processed about 10% of red and nepheline mud at the alumina refineries proving it to be leader in alumina mud processing among the global aluminium companies.

"Reducing the volume of waste, limiting waste generation, increasing processing and recycling are all key elements of the Company's strategy to boost its sustainability efforts and reduce its impact on the environment. For example, RUSAL’s Sayanogorsk industrial site already processes or sells over 90% of waste produced. The ongoing development and implementation of new technologies, which are now in the final stages of testing, as well as the modernization of our production facilities will allow to set such ultimate tasks to other facilities of the Company," said RUSAL’s Technical Director Victor Mann.

While continuing the self-processing of its wastes, Rusal also sells out certain types of its wastes as high-value raw materials to other industries, which it intends to increase to 100%. Rusal is increasing co-operation and expanding partnership with domestic and international industrial manufacturers to achieve this goal.

RUSAL has been developing and implementing technological solutions for the usage of previously accumulated waste across the production process and further processing in order to cut down its environmental impact.

The company is also investing in the R&D for processing of red mud, the key waste product of alumina refining, which contains valuable metal oxides like scandium. They refined their technology in 2018 increasing the degree of recovery of rare metals. In 2019, they continued to optimize their technology for scandium oxide production from red mud.

Rusal also processed more than 60% of its spent coal potlining in 2018. Overall, the amount of recycled waste from coal potlining increased by 20% by the end of 2018 as compared to 2009.