Three expressways intersect to the west of Japan’s Toyama Prefecture; each brings raw and scrap materials to the region’s aluminum producers and transports newly smelted ingots to global markets.

Aluminum is an important part of industry here. But innovation is disrupting business-as-usual, seeking new ways of preserving resources and embracing a more sustainable future.

Inside LIXIL’s Oyabe Plant in the prefecture, furnaces reaching blistering temperatures of 1,100°C melt down aluminum sashes and other waste materials collected from various locations. Once impurities have been removed, the recycled aluminum is reborn and turned into new products.

Recycled Aluminum Can Beat the Heat

Look around you. While you may not always be able to see it directly, lightweight, durable and easy-to-process aluminum has become a ubiquitous part of daily life. And global consumption is projected to increase by more than 50% by 2050¹.

However, meeting this spike in demand creates a problem. Smelting new aluminum ingots is a heat-intensive, energy-guzzling and high-emissions business, even when using renewable energy sources such as solar power during the process.

And with bodies like the EU planning to impose a “carbon tax” duty on high-carbon goods imported into the bloc from 2026, the incentive to make products more sustainable has never been stronger.

That’s where recycling innovations come into play. Melting down used aluminum products and materials is less energy-intensive than producing new ingots as no smelting is required.

Making the Most of Valuable Resources

LIXIL began recycling aluminum from old buildings about 25 years ago, long before the term “carbon neutral” was coined.

One Step at a Time

“To achieve this, we needed a technology that could efficiently and thoroughly remove iron, stainless steel, zinc and other dissimilar alloys from the recovered materials,” Tanaka says.

More than a decade of research on sorting technology followed. Between 2009 and 2012, LIXIL worked with Waseda University and others as part of a NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Development Organization) funded project².
Since then, the company has conducted its own research and development to enable the materials division to achieve the same level of quality with recycled aluminum as that made from ingots.

Converting Today’s Waste into Tomorrow’s Products

PremiAL products can significantly reduce embodied carbon emissions – associated with processing, transportation, construction, renovation and disposal of building materials – for construction companies, building materials manufacturers, developers, and building owners. LIXIL’s solutions have until now focused more on reducing operational carbon emissions – that is, emissions emitted while a building is being used. This includes making buildings more energy efficient by raising the insulation of windows, doors and walls.

The LIXIL team’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. PremiAL R70 and R100 are the only recycled aluminum products in Japan to receive the EcoLeaf environmental label, a third-party certification.

The R100 has also been verified by Japan Quality Assurance Organization, a third-party body that evaluates greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling requires only 3% of the energy required to produce new ingots, so using recycled aluminum as a raw material means approximately 97% of energy-related CO₂ emissions can be reduced³.