Circularity Lighthouse award for Holcim
McKinsey and World Economic Forum recognize Holcim’s innovative and scalable ECOCycle technology
HOLCIM’s ECOCycle circular technology has been named a ‘Circularity Lighthouse in the Built Environment’, in a joint initiative between McKinsey & Co. and the World Economic Forum announced at this year’s annual meeting in Davos.
The Circularity Lighthouse designation recognizes pioneering solutions that demonstrate a novel, distinctive circularity approach, and proven and substantial impact and value, with significant scale and maturity. Circularity in the built environment has the potential to reduce upfront carbon emissions by up to 75%, according to McKinsey research.
Nollaig Forrest, chief sustainability officer at Holcim, said: ‘Circularity is a game changer to decarbonize building at scale. At Holcim, we are operating more than 100 ECOCycle recycling centres globally to drive circular construction. With our advanced recycling of construction demolition materials, we can already reduce by up to 40% the CO2 footprint of cement. This is just the beginning; as we innovate and partner across the value chain to evolve building norms, we aim to accelerate the shift to circular construction in all metropolitan areas where we operate.’
With their ECOCycle technology, Holcim can recycle up to 100% of construction demolition materials across a broad range of applications, from decarbonized raw materials in low-carbon cement formulation, to recycled aggregates in circular concrete. ECOCycle enables concrete, cement, and aggregates to contain from 10% to 100% recycled construction demolition materials with no compromise in performance, while reducing their environmental footprint.
As a global leader in recycling, circularity is at the core of Holcim’s decarbonization journey. Building new from old, Holcim recycled nearly 7 million tonnes of construction demolition materials during 2022 into new building solutions – the equivalent of more than 1,000 truckloads of materials every day. Accelerating this pace, Holcim aim to recycle more than 20 million tonnes of construction demolition materials by 2030 in Europe alone, by scaling up ECOCycle technology to reach 150 sites by 2030.
