Enable the circular economy

Today’s waste is the raw material for tomorrow. Renewi contributes to a circular economy and protects the world by giving new life to used materials.

Climate change and weather-related hazards are having life-changing and devastating impacts on communities across the globe. Floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires are on the increase causing devastation to agricultural production, health, the economy and biodiversity. 2021 was one of the hottest years on record across the globe. It is widely known that there is a strong correlation between material use and global warming.

The role of Europe in becoming circular

Europe is taking essential steps to reduce global warming and embrace the circular economy, on a legislative level and by grass-roots initiatives. See page 15 for
more information about what governments are doing to enable a circular economy. The European Union wants to be net-zero by 2050. The Netherlands, Belgium and the UK have also committed to this goal. According to the Paris Agreement, we need to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°C in this century.

Contribution of the European waste industry

Only 8.6% of the global economy is now circular. Our waste sector plays a central role in this number because we provide secondary raw materials derived from public
and commercial waste. The growth potential of the circular economy lies in the ability to reuse products or raw materials. A significant amount is already recycled
in Western Europe, but there are still some material flows that are challenging to recycle. By recycling and recovering secondary raw materials, we avoid carbon emissions from extracting, transporting and processing virgin raw materials. In addition, carbon emissions are saved by recovering energy from nonrecyclable materials and producing fuels from waste.
The waste sector could make a massive contribution to Europe’s climate goals.

RENEWIng Earth by giving life to used materials

Circularity is essential to meet climate targets, but ourcurrent take-make-waste economy wastes over 90%. This circularity gap offers incredible opportunities to reduce
CO2 in the short term by giving new life to used materials. At Renewi, we keep valuable materials in the product value cycle, preventing the extraction of new materials and associated emissions. Today’s waste materials are the resources for the future. Recycling and recovering help retain the world’s natural resources and preserve the planet for future generations.
However, we face many challenges in recycling, like dealing with higher costs than competing virgin markets or the struggle to achieve the same purity due to non-homogeneous inputs. But at the same time, we are proud of our innovations to create high-qualitysecondary materials that can be used repeatedly.

Our goals and metrics for 2025

Our objective is to turn waste into new products by focusing on recycling rate, carbon avoidance and innovative secondary materials produced. We have set clear, ambitious and attainable goals.

Transforming waste into new products

We contribute to more circularity and a smaller circularity gap by transforming our customers’ waste into new materials and products. This year Renewi has a recycling
rate of 67.2%. By 2025, we intend to divert 75% of all the waste we receive towards recycling, saving more than 10mT of materials from incineration and landfill. For our entire organisation to work towards this goal, we launched the Mission75 programme.

Heading steadily for our FY25 target

Together with our partners, we made notable progress in optimised sorting, exploring new destinations for our secondary materials and producing high-quality circular materials and products. Last year we produced 353,500 tonnes of innovative secondary materials, and this year 282,400 tonnes. This is a small reduction linked to the discontinuation of one of the two innovative secondary
materials produced by our Mineralz & Water Division (M&W). Our internal innovation pipeline still gives us confidence in reaching our FY25 target of 1mT per year.
To successfully close the circularity gap means achieving a higher recycling rate. That is why we advise our customers about circularity, from inspiration on circular purchases to eco-design and from developing circular business models to sorting waste better at the source.

Carbon avoidance from recycling and recovery

Our goal for 2025 is to enable a total of 4.2mT of CO2 avoidance in the supply chain annually. When secondary instead of primary raw materials are used, it leads to substantial carbon savings, accounting for 2.5mT of avoided CO2 emissions per year. Other sources of carbon avoidance are the production of waste-derived fuels such as biogas from food waste, energy production from residual waste, landfill gas power generation, and the use of waste-derived fuels on the ATM site or by our customers. Together, these account for another 1.6mT of avoided CO2 emissions
for a total of 3.1mT of avoided CO2 emissions. Our target for 2025 is to avoid 275kg CO2 per tonne of waste handled. This year we avoided 252kg CO2 per tonne of waste handled.
Of course, our energy use also increases with our increasing effort to recycle more and produce more secondary materials. We are working on reducing our own carbon emissions by switching to green alternatives if possible and by creating energy via solar and wind.

Looking at our impact at a different scale, Renewi contributes to a great ‘carbon benefit’ for the planet. The amount of carbon avoidance Renewi enabled in the supply chain this year was six times higher than our own carbon footprint (scope 1 and 2). Our overall industry contributes to avoiding carbon emissions in much higher quantities than it directly emits.

Performance

Renewi is positioned in the middle of our society and is subject to external influences. Covid-19 also caused high raw material prices due to high demand, and
a greater need for recyclates, which led to higher yields and worked out as a boost for circularity. Despite lockdowns, levels of waste recycled slightly
increased. The recycling rate rose by 1.4% to 67.2%. This outcome is driven by significant investments in post-sorting techniques, and we know that regulation like
Vlarema 8 in Belgium will also contribute in the coming year to boost our recycling rate in the Commercial Waste Divisions. Our total carbon avoidance this year remains
almost equal to 2021. This can be explained by the fact that, on one side, our recycling volumes and recycling rate did go up. However, the three other contributors to our total carbon avoidance did not rise and more actual carbon emissions were emitted from incinerators with energy recovery, with a negative effect on our total carbon avoidance.

Outlook

The numbers show a positive trend and slight increases. We are still on track to meet our 2025 targets. We expect recyclate prices to rise further, which will also be in our
favour. We are optimistic about the progress of a circular economy, especially when regulations that require better sorting at source, like Vlarema 8, become more uniform. In addition, achieving the CO2 reduction potential will require efforts across Europe to further boost recycling capacity, including public support for more systems allowing separate collection of more waste streams.
Also, companies should focus more on the ecological design and recyclability of the products they put on the market. The government can also do its part by introducing new regulations that, for example, impose a minimum use of recycled materials in new products.