Our responsibility

For us, sustainability is much more than just a word. As RE:CORE, we have set ourselves the goal of reducing the consumption of resources in the window construction industry by means of recycling. Our core expertise lies in feeding aluminium into a closed material cycle after its service life so that it can be reused. In this way we protect raw material reserves worldwide and help to reduce damage to the climate and environment caused by the extraction of primary resources. We take our responsibility for protecting the planet very seriously because current climate protection plans and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees can only be achieved with a consistent circular economy.

Conserve resources with recycling

Continuing to work predominantly with primary raw materials will lead to shortages in the near future for two main reasons: Firstly, natural reserves are limited. The sources will soon be used up and are not sufficient to supply the entire global population. Secondly, extracting fossil fuels and making them useable requires a great deal of energy and generates a large amount of harmful emissions. Recycling aluminium profiles only requires about 5% of the energy needed to make a profile out of primary material. Recycling and the switchover to recycled raw materials are essential for our planet. It is very important to us to drive this switchover forwards with everything we have got. That is why we are committed to fighting together with our shareholders TSR and Schüco for more widespread use of the high-quality aluminium recycled raw materials that we produce. We believe it is essential for recycled materials to be used in the manufacture of new products and that this is rewarded with building certifications, for example, as an incentive to reduce the consumption of primary raw materials.

The construction industry is going to change

Climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest is the ambitious aim pursued by the “European Green Deal”. And this means that the requirements of future investments and specifications will change significantly for the building sector too – with the main criterion being the carbon footprint of a building. This can be reduced by using recycled materials instead of primary raw materials. And that is precisely where RE:CORE comes in. With our business, we want to close the material cycles for waste windows and profile offcuts from window fabrication to drive forward the circular economy in the building sector and essentially fulfil the Green Deal with recycling.

Aluminium – a material for life

Construction units that need to meet the highest demands in terms of functionality, quality and design are often made from aluminium. It is possible to reduce CO2 emissions even during the first phase of the product life cycle, by using aluminium alloys with a high recycled material content. But this is just the start of a long life cycle, as aluminium can be recycled an infinite number of times with no loss of quality. This means that profiles made from so-called ‘secondary aluminium’ have the same excellent properties as those that do not contain recycled material. In fact, approximately 75% of the aluminium that has ever been produced industrially is still in use today, and a significant proportion thereof has been recycled multiple times.

Another convincing argument in favour of recycling aluminium is the huge energy savings. The manufacture of recycled aluminium requires only 5% of the energy needed to produce primary aluminium.

All of these are good reasons to feed construction units made from aluminium into closed material cycles, to remove the burden from the environment and promote sustainability in our industry.