Sustainability

We believe that steel is the only major material group today that can meet tomorrow’s challenge of a fully circular economy. Steel’s recyclability is unmatched by any other major material group. Today, up to 85-90% of steel products are recovered at their end of life and recycled to produce new steel. The magnetic properties of steel make it easy to segregate from other materials, so whereas other materials are often downcycled, steel retains all of its original properties, making it stand out as one of the most easily recycled materials.

The steel-making process also creates a wide range of by-products such as slag and sludges, dust, waste gases, and heat and steam. These by-products are captured, and either used in our own processes or in other industrial processes. For example, blast furnace slag can be used in cement, in the production of stonewool (a fire retardant and insulator) or in glass-making. Other slag by-products can be used as fertiliser or in road construction. And the waste gases from various stages in the steelmaking process are either reused internally or used to generate energy – often for surrounding communities once we've met the needs of our own operations.

Even today, there are fewer CO₂ emissions embedded in the production of steel in many applications in comparison with other materials. For example, in the automotive sector, for the structural ‘body-in-white’ of a vehicle, the CO₂ emissions associated with an automotive part made of advanced high strength steel are less than half of those associated with an equivalent aluminium automotive part, and less than a third of those associated with a part made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic.

On the automotive side, S-in motion^® is a set of steel solutions developed by ArcelorMittal for carmakers who wish to create lighter, safer, and more environmentally friendly vehicles. It includes a range of steel solutions that can be implemented today to design eco-friendly vehicles at the most affordable cost. As for electromobility, our iCARe^® range enables the efficient generation, storage, and use of energy in electrical powertrains.

Steel is also particularly well suited to sustainable construction. Strong, lightweight, easy to form and assemble, steel reduces the environmental impact of construction at all stages of a building’s lifecycle. And at the end of the building’s life, the steel it contains can be 100% recycled to create new steel.

ResponsibleSteel™ is the industry’s first global multi-stakeholder standard and certification initiative, which ArcelorMittal has played a key role in founding. ArcelorMittal Europe – Flat Products is aiming to secure ResponsibleSteel™ certification for all its sites in 2020. This certification will enable each ArcelorMittal site to demonstrate that our production processes meet rigorously defined standards across a broad range of social, environmental and governance criteria, including:

• Climate change and greenhouse gas emissions
• Water stewardship and biodiversity
• Human rights & labour rights
• Community relations and business integrity

In 2020, ResponsibleSteel™ will extend its program to include requirements for the raw materials supply chain.

More info here: https://www.responsiblesteel.org/

REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) is a regulation of the European Union entered into force on 1 June 2007. It was adopted to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks that can be posed by chemicals, while enhancing the competitiveness of the EU chemicals industry. It also promotes alternative methods for the hazard assessment of substances in order to reduce the number of tests on animals.

ArcelorMittal leads the registration of elemental and pig iron for the steel industry and other stakeholders. We are proud to have successfully submitted the joint part of the registration dossier during the summer of 2010; our affiliated companies have also notified to the European Classification and Labelling Inventory all relevant substances as foreseen by the CLP regulation.

In 2012, ArcelorMittal launched a new organic coated steel collection entitled simply Nature. Entirely recyclable, the Nature collection is a sustainable organic coated steel product line, delivered with coatings and surface treatments free of hexavalent chromium and heavy metals (lead or hexavalent chromium complex).

https://industry.arcelormittal.com/products-solutions/productdocumentcentre?id_product=179

In 2015, we have suppressed lead in all our flat products galvanisation lines, anticipating again on harsher restrictions under the European RoHS regulation (for domestic appliances and other EEEs). In 2004, ahead of the ELV (for automotive) regulation, we suppressed hexavalent chromium-based passivation in all our automotive processes.

Today all our products are REACH, RoHS and ELV compliant.

Furthermore, we continue to invest in R&D programs with our providers concerning the surface treatment and painting matters, in order to constantly be ahead of the new regulations.

All useful documents related to REACH are available on this site at https://industry.arcelormittal.com/sustainability

Additional information, such as the REACH updated candidate list is available on request at https://industry.arcelormittal.com/getintouch

ArcelorMittal Climate Action Report explains how steel is made today, what our carbon challenge is, how it can be successfully addressed and what policies and support are required to make this possible.

You can download it here

ArcelorMittal Europe has developed a CO₂ roadmap to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030. The target, for ArcelorMittal Europe – Flat Products, is in line with group’s ambition to be carbon neutral in Europe by 2050.

The roadmap to achieve the 30% target is based on three distinct pathways that have the potential to deliver a significant reduction in carbon emissions, including:

• Clean power steelmaking, using clean power as the energy source for hydrogen-based steelmaking, and longer term for direct electrolysis steelmaking;
• Circular carbon steelmaking, which uses circular carbon energy sources, such as waste biomass, to displace fossil fuels in steelmaking, thereby enabling low-emissions steelmaking;
• Fossil fuel carbon capture and storage, where the current method of steel production is maintained but the carbon is then captured and stored or re-used rather than emitted into the atmosphere.

Initiatives and technologies underway or to be implemented at the different sites include:

• Carbalyst – capture waste gases from the blast furnace and biologically convert it into bio-ethanol. The €120m launch project at ArcelorMittal Ghent is expected to be completed in 2020.
• IGAR – captures waste CO₂ from the blast furnace and converts it into a synthetic gas that can be reinjected into the blast furnace in place of fossil fuels to reduce iron ore. An industrial pilot of this technology is being developed at ArcelorMittal Dunkirk in France.
• Torero – €40m investment to convert waste wood into bio-coal to displace the fossil fuel coal currently injected into the blast furnace. Our first large scale demonstration plant in ArcelorMittal Ghent is expected to be in operation by the end of 2020.
• Reducing iron ore with hydrogen – €65m investment at Hamburg site to increase the use of hydrogen for the direct reduction of iron ore.
• Carbon capture and storage – integrating breakthrough technologies to bring down the costs of capturing, purifying and liquifying CO₂ from waste gases. Construction of a carbon capture and storage pilot project, 3D, will begin at ArcelorMittal Dunkirk in 2020 and will be able to capture 0.5 metric tons of CO₂ an hour from steelmaking gases by 2021.

ArcelorMittal supports the European Commission’s Green Deal, and believes the right market mechanisms are a critical part of enabling the deployment of low-emissions steelmaking. This includes a carbon border adjustment and the Just Transition Fund, to invest in research, innovation and green technology.