Our ongoing journey leading to ASI certification has reached a new milestone: Certification against Performance Standard V3!
Our product, eccomelt356.2, in and of itself was created to enable the circular economy, to upcycle wheels in the automotive industry, We have advanced our process to allow our customers to obtain even higher recycling content, lower melt loss, and higher energy efficiency. We are not a re-melter: we use a patented, non-thermal process, meticulous sorting and recycling and a single raw material. We thereby achieve the exact chemistry we need, at likely the lowest carbon footprint in the industry. Our soon to be implemented LIBS system will take the process to the next level technologically.
As a result of our process, we are the uncontested leader in single product recycling. Since we don’t melt scrap, we use very little electricity and create far less emissions than a typical re-melter. And since our raw material is sourced as close as possible to our suppliers, and with as little diversity as possible, we can drive our carbon footprint down even further. Moreover, we use %100 post consumer feedstock, which closes the loop from cradle to gate. In net zero terms, it’s a one, two, punch!
We have recently released our EPD numbers which tell our incredible story.
We met up with ASI two years ago and began a journey that has enabled us to formalize, through key polices, our prior practice and understanding of corporate social responsibility.
There is no question that ASI has the highest standard in the industry, and under their guidance and encouragement, we examined how we look at corporate governance, became aware of any gaps in our implementation, and trained our employees to follow through on best practices.
ASI’s standards have helped us specifically with polices surrounding the areas of responsible sourcing, corporate governance, equity, inclusion, and indigenous populations, as well as augmenting our positive effect on the environment. In effect, our experience over the last two years with ASI has provided our extremely green product with the additional benefit of ASI’s formalized policies that further strengthens our global impact.
The journey and process with ASI disciplined us in our governance by putting our focus on business integrity and public disclosure. We have strengthened our policies and identified gaps. Our environmental and social governance was pre-existing, and with the help of ASI, we have now formalized our practices by rewriting and creating new corporate policies and implemented them.
Since Eccomelt LLC has been situated in industrial areas since its inception, the issues of biodiversity have been carefully regulated by pre-existing, strict government regulations. Nonetheless, because of our relationship with ASI, we were able to formalize important polices regarding employee training, reporting on a regular basis, and monitoring this important consideration.
Moreover, we are proud to say that as a result of ASI, our human rights and labour rights policies, with a focus on occupational health and safety and labour awareness in the workforce, have been formalized and are now available to the public on our website to download.
In addition, thanks to ASI, our business has become even more transparent with formalized anti -bribery policies, also on our website.
Since we do not use water in our process at all, but rather only for sanitary purposes and human consumption, it was easy for us to monitor and conserve, but we are happy now to have the methodology in place and a regular accounting of our usage this resource.
The crux of our business is that we inherently benefit the environment, by recycling post-consumer aluminum wheels, and our non-thermal low carbon replacement for A356.2 aluminum, which is an incredible boon the environment, as primary aluminum is very high carbon. But ASI took us even further, since our new Sustainability Report 2024 now covers most of the social and environmental areas which now, for the first time, have codified polices of what we do or do not accept with public disclosure.
The impact of our improvements in these areas has enabled us to lower our carbon footprint even further, and we will continue to go forward in this area. Our Life Cycle Analysis Cradle to Gate was previously done by Climate Partner, and now Vertima and ASTM for the EPD, and the numbers are testament to our efforts.
The direct impact of our focus on sustainability actions with a specific focus on the environment, has been an acknowledgement of our gains in the areas of near sourcing and a calculation of this benefit. Our Houston plant has enabled our closer sourcing of wheels which has a tremendous impact on our outgoing logistics.
We have taken new initiatives using electric forklifts, greener sources of energy, electricity or gas, propane, and increased rail in our day-to-day operations.
We have been working on waste reduction, reducing our waste streams, land fill waste, and how we source our raw materials. We have new purchasing policies which involve responsible sourcing, (which is now audited and involves responsible supplier onboarding), and direct sourcing of our packaging from India. Recycled wood is now used for our pallets. Since working with ASI, we are now testing electric forklifts in Georgia and Toronto.
All of the above shows how Eccomelt and ASI worked together to bring about an even greater and more powerful impact: People now understand that Eccomelt is at the impeccable standard that ASI has promulgated, in both the public and private sectors, and we will be able to continue to serve as an example in both the aluminum and automotive industries.
