Our environmental protection actions > Our actions in favor of the environment

Recylex is a major player in pollution clearing at the European level through its recycling activities.

Recycling development is a major activity for the Group and an integral part of its industrial strategy and environmental protection policy.

Whether it involves recovering value from the zinc contained in dust from steel works, lead from used automobile batteries, recycling polypropylene or industrial waste, Metaleurop seeks to make its actions better known, both to professionals and to the general public.

Automobile batteries:

Lead recycling, especially of lead batteries, represents 70% of the Group's production of this metal. Recylex's lead refineries have over 80 year's experience in recycling lead batteries.
Every year 11 million batteries are recycled by the Group's recycling plants in France and Germany.
To encourage the collection of used automobile batteries, Recylex is developing a partnership with major retailers and their auto service centers.

Polypropylene:

Recylex is the European leader in recycling polypropylene from battery cases.

C2P, a Recylex subsidiary, produces granulates of recycled polypropylene recovered primarily from used battery cases and other automotive parts..
The plastic contained in the batteries is processed by our crushing centers, as well as other polypropylene parts coming primarily from the automobile industry.

As the inheritance from our mining and industrial past, Recylex is committed to renovating the old mines for which it has the concession. This voluntary responsible commitment is in line with the environmental approach assumed and set in the framework of the continuation plan.

These concessions are no longer operated and our company has over the last few years implemented a program to return the corresponding mining rights to the French Government.

First of all this comprises "returning the mining sites to nature" by ensuring that they will not create any problems relating to the protection of local populations and the preservation of the environment.

This brings us to durably seal off the many entranceways to mine tunnels and shafts, to ensure the stability of the land to avoid any risk of collapse, to dismantle surface installations, to check and even to treat, mine water before releasing it into the surrounding environment so that these waste waters have no adverse effects on the environment.

We carefully monitor the quality of the water in surrounding rivers and dismantle mine heads before returning them to nature thanks to site reprofiling and replanting efforts so that these sites can recover a landscaped appearance.

All of these operations are performed under the control of and in line with rules set out by the French Ministry of Industry and its regulatory agency DRIRE, in collaboration with the appropriate central and local government bodies, with environmental protection bodies (especially to protect bats) and the landowners.

Once the work is completed this is duly recorded by a ruling issued by the prefecture.

Then renunciation of the concession is duly authorized by ministerial decree.

In 2006, Recylex relinquished 5 mines and intends to renovate 5 others in 2007. The group hopes to hold 16 mines by the end of 2007 versus 26 at the end of 2005.