Panorama da reciclagem dos principais materiais metálicos no Brasil

Abstract

Currently, society demands high quantities of materials to produce the most varied products. This demand is a consequence of both the population growth promoted by technological advances and the change in the consumption pattern of the urban population. In this sense, there is a need to reuse materials in order to avoid burdening the environment with their primary production. Metallic materials, the focus of this work, present high energy consumption and environmental degradation in their production process, and an alternative for the production of metals is through the reinsertion of materials already used in the production chain, a process called recycling. This work analyzed series of historical data on solid waste generation, recycling and values associated with the process, focusing on the main metallic materials used in Brazil, iron, aluminum and copper. The data obtained from government studies (mainly from the Ministry of Mines and Energy and the National Mining Agency), business organizations (such as Instituto Aço Brasil, Associação Brasileira do Alumínio and Associação Brasileira do Cobre) and non-governmental organizations and, with data and information obtained from the literature review about the primary production processes of metals, allowed to parametrically estimate the specific consumption of energy and raw materials, specific generation of greenhouse gases and the reduction of these factors with the secondary production of metals through recycling. The estimated values were arranged in illustrative graphs in order to provide a better visualization of the total values of savings and environmental unburdening with recycling. It was concluded that recycling as a production process saves an enormous amount of greenhouse gas generation, ore, and energy when compared to the process of obtaining virgin material. However, the recycling process is still far short of its true potential, since only a small portion of the waste is recycled, generating a large economic and environmental loss.