Environmental impact Hydro profiles produced in the Benelux

We commissioned a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to understand all these environmental impacts. The LCA was prepared by an external consulting firm according to ISO 14040, ISO 14044 and NEN EN 15804:2012+A1+A2 (2019), NMD Determination Method and verified by third parties.

Why an ​​LCA?

On the one hand, life cycle analysis serves to optimize our (production) processes. On the other hand, we want to be transparent and give our customers information about the environmental impact of our products. With this we enable you to:

• Perform your own calculations with the addition of our data
• Use the data for tenders
• Compare products with each other

"Hydro provides transparency on the composition and footprint of our products. Our sustainability claims are documented and verified by third parties. Transparent information on methods and calculations is essential to get a full picture of the actual environmental impact of recycled aluminum."

Footprint made of recycled aluminium

In the aluminum industry, two LCA methods are used for LCA calculations related to pre-consumer scrap input and production scrap output:

• The Cut-off approach. In this approach, the footprint follows the (main) product. It considers process scrap as waste and carries only the carbon footprint of the recycling process.
• The mass-based allocation approach (avoided burden approach). With this approach, the carbon footprint follows the material. This approach assumes that the process scrap has never fulfilled its purpose as a product and thus, in addition to the CO2 footprint of the recycling process, the material carries the CO2 footprint of the original primary aluminum from which it was produced.

Although the two approaches are both valid from an LCA accounting perspective, they lead to very different results in modules A1-A3. In the absence of official consensus, we publish the results of both the cutoff and mass-based allocation approaches to encourage full transparency with all stakeholders and to ensure the completeness of our LCA studies.

The factor that has the greatest impact on the emissions from an extruded aluminum profile is the choice of raw material. It is therefore worth paying close attention to the origin of the aluminum and choosing a climate-friendly base material.