Aluminium cables recycling process: Environmental impacts identification and reduction

•Presentation of 2 recycling scenarios for aluminium cable: mechanical or smelter processes.•Life cycle comparison of the 2 scenarios.•Identification of the environmental hotspots for aluminium cable recycling process.•How LCA results were used by MTB Company to improve aluminium recycling process. Life cycle impact of European generic primary and secondary aluminium are well defined. However specific end-of-Life scenario for aluminium products are not available in the literature. In this study, the environmental assessment of cable recycling pathway is examined using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The data comes from a recycling plant (MTB Recycling) in France. MTB Recycling process relies only on mechanical separation and optical sorting steps on shredder cables to obtain a high purity aluminium (above 99.6%). The life cycle assessment results confirm the huge environmental benefits for aluminium recycled in comparison with primary aluminium. In addition, our study demonstrates the gains of product centric recycling pathways for cables. The mechanical separation is a relevant alternative to metal smelting recycling. This work was done firstly to document specific environmental impact of the MTB Recycling processes in comparison with traditional aluminium recycling smelting. Secondly, to provide an environmental overview of the process steps in order to reduce the environmental impact of this recycling pathway. The identified environmental hotspots from the LCA for the MTB recycling pathway provide help for designers to carry on reducing the environmental impact.