Sims Resource Renewal and the Circular Economy

17 August 2020

Enabling the Circular Economy

In 2019 we introduced Sims’ purpose create a world without waste to preserve our planet.

Enabling a circular economy through our resource renewal programme is a key step towards realising this purpose as we will re-use our waste and preserve our environment – while creating social and economic value.

What is the Circular Economy?

A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.

Ellen MacAurthur Foundation

Sims, by its very nature is at the centre of the circular economy.

• Over the last decade Sims Limited has recycled over 110 million tonnes of ferrous and non-ferrous materials.
• We have installed state of the art metal recovery plants and downstream separation systems and processes, enabling us to extract even more metal from waste and produce higher quality products.
• We enable our value chain to achieve around 18 million tonnes of carbon reductions in 2020.

Read more about Sims’ sustainability performance in our 2020 Sustainability Report.

Through Sims Resource Renewal, we are supporting the transition to a more circular economy. Our aim is to have several resource renewal facilities operating across the globe by 2030 so we can divert 1 million tonnes of ASR from going to landfill every year and transform this into new, useful products for society.

We are also investing in research and innovation to develop new technologies to create a truly closed loop operating system. This includes developing a new pilot facility at our existing Rocklea metals recycling operation to progress our own proprietary technology.

This will allow us to start reducing our ASR immediately while we advance these new technologies.