Embraco recycles 87% of its waste

Embraco, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of refrigeration solutions, closed 2017 with an 87% recycling index for all waste generated in its plants located in Brazil, Slovakia, China, Mexico, Italy and the United States.

This is an achievement shared with Nat.Genius, Embraco’s circular economy platform that transforms products coming from the reverse logistics of consumer electronics – such as refrigerators, ovens, computers and small appliances – and materials arising from other industrial processes into raw material for different household or commercial applications. Unlike recycling, the company works with repurposing materials – where there is no need to be industrially reprocessed – generating components and raw material for the production of new consumer goods. In addition, it operates from waste management consulting to engineering intelligence and remanufactured system sales.

Between 2015 and 2017, the platform processed close to 20 thousand tons of materials, being 13.4 thousand tons of steel, 4.8 thousand tons of iron, one thousand tons of copper and 1.6 thousand tons of plastic.

Nat.Genius is a global benchmark in the circular economy, recognized by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an international institution that places circular economy on the agenda of decision makers such as companies, government and academia.

The program recycles and organizes the reuse and reindustrialization of the company’s materials, required by different production lines, but also goes beyond the company's frontiers to other industries through consultancies that evaluate the nature of the waste and indicate the best way to manage discarding, within the circular economy concept. “Today, Nat.Genius has more than 90 customers in Brazil and abroad, developing success cases in waste management in different industry sectors", states Raul Bosco, senior manager of New Business.