Eccomelt: Transforming Business with Sustainability

30 September 2024

Amy Bitton, Director of Marketing, Martin Hartlieb, Technical Director and Zulf Karim, COO, discuss Eccomelt’s certification journey and the environmental impacts of “near sourcing”.

Building a sustainable business

What does your ASI membership mean to you? Why does it matter?

Over the last number of years, there has been a huge drive for more sustainable business operations. As a rapidly growing business, increasing in capacity, people, monitoring etc, we needed to build the right infrastructure around our corporate plan. We found ASI Standards to be properly codified, addressing issues like CSR reporting, transparency, disclosure, etc. It was therefore a natural progression to join ASI and achieve certification. We had responsible business practices in place already, but the rigorous certification process, and the breadth of it, highlighted our need to formalise our practices. It was also beneficial to have a third-party organisation review what we were doing.

Transparency, disclosure and standardised processes

What improvements or changes have you made under the key social or environmental areas covered by the ASI Standards?

We met up with ASI two years ago and began a journey that has enabled us to enhance, through key polices, our prior practice and understanding of corporate social responsibility. There is no question that ASI has the highest standard in the industry, and under their guidance and encouragement, we examined how we look at corporate governance, became aware of any gaps in our implementation, and trained our employees to follow through on best practices. ASI’s Standards have helped us specifically with policies surrounding the areas of responsible sourcing, corporate governance, equity, and inclusion, ,as well as augmenting our positive effect on the environment.

We have undertaken new initiatives, such as using electric forklifts, greener sources of energy, and increased rail in our day-to-day operations. We have been working on waste reduction, reducing our waste streams, land fill waste, and how we source our raw materials. We have new purchasing policies which involve responsible sourcing, (which is now audited and involves responsible supplier onboarding), and direct sourcing of our packaging from India.
Our prior 3rd party carbon footprint study, and our current EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) disclosure, revealed to our customers a notably low carbon footprint, but it wasn’t until our partnership with ASI that we conducted a full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which was integral to the ASI certification process.
This level of reporting is now standard and streamlined, and it has raised an awareness of impacts across the board.

Near Sourcing for positive environmental impacts

What has been the impact of your sustainability actions?

The direct impact of our sustainability actions, with a specific focus on environmental impacts, has been the acknowledgement of our gains in the areas of “near sourcing” and a calculation of this benefit. For example, the commissioning of our Houston plant has enabled our closer sourcing of wheels which has a tremendous impact on our incoming and outgoing logistics.

Our product, eccomelt356.2, in and of itself was created to enable the circular economy to upcycle wheels in the automotive industry, which we have been doing successfully and with continuous improvement since the inception of Eccomelt LLC in 2006. We have advanced our process to allow our customers to obtain even higher recycling content, lower melt loss, and higher energy efficiency. We use 100% post-consumer feedstock, which closes the loop from cradle to gate.

Another impact of our sustainability actions is a sense among our employees that they have become our partners in this journey to improve our environmental, governance and social performance.

Improving efficiencies for the future.

How are you looking to improve on your current achievements? What does the future look like?

Our focus over the next couple of years is to drive efficiency. We’re taking our business to where our customers are, opening new facilities to enable near sourcing and supporting our customers even more. As the company grows, we’re going to focus on the social aspects and continue to develop. We’re actively reducing our waste streams and driving the circular economy.

Read more about Eccomelt

Consult Eccomelt’s website
Consult Eccomelt’s approach to sustainability

Learn more about Eccomelt Canada

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