Stress on recycling of steel in environmental-friendly way

Tirupati: The consultative committee for the Ministry of Steel chaired by Union Minister of Steel Ram Chandra Prasad Singh and attended by the Minister of State for Steel and Rural Development Faggan Singh Kulaste met in Tirupati on Friday. The meeting took note of the roadmap for a circular economy in the steel sector.

A discussion on the recycling of steel was held during the meeting and dwelled at length on the possibilities of recycling the steel in an environmental friendly way. It was felt that in a circular economy, material manufactured with the use of natural resources is in circulation till the end of its useful life and thereafter is capable of being remanufactured in another form.

It reduces the extraction of natural resources by increasing the efficiency of the resources in circulation based on the principles of six R's – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover, Redesign and Remanufacture. The committee felt that responsible consumption and production is one of Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) pertaining to the circular economy adopted by the United Nations for sustainable development. Steel is very conducive for transition from linear economy to circular economy as it can be manufactured, reused and recycled without compromising its properties. End of life products such as cars, white goods, construction scrap etc. can be used as scrap for recycling. While NITI Aayog constituted 11 sector specific committees for transition from linear economy to circular economy, the Ministry of Steel was assigned the responsibility of preparing the action plan for the committee for circular economy in scrap metal and the report was already submitted.

Referring to the action taken by the government in this regard so far, the committee recalled the setting up of metal scrapping centres in India. While Mahindra Accelo has set up three vehicle scraping centres which are already operational at Noida, Chennai and Pune, three other centres at Indore, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad are being established in 2022-23.

As part of the roadmap for promoting circular economy in the steel industry, it is proposed to promote use of plastic waste in blast furnace, reducing the requirement of coking coal. Production of Bio-Ethanol using the off gasses of steel plants and Ferro alloy units is another initiative among several others. The Sathyabama University, Chennai, has undertaken study for utilisation of induction furnace slag for pilot scale development of paving blocks.