An act of environmental responsibility

Co-processing is the use of the excellent conditions of the cement manufacturing process for the safe and final destruction of several kinds of industrial waste. Tires, chemical solvents, used oil, paint sludge, plastics, contaminated soil and others can be co-processed. The waste is exploited as energy or raw material, incorporating the mass of ashes produced in combustion, which is added to the clinker.

Votorantim Cimentos was one of the first companies to adopt co-processing. It started in 1990 at the Rio Branco Unit (Parana). Nowadays this work is carried out at the Cearense (Ceara), Cimesa (Sergipe), Cipasa (Paraiba), Corumbá (Mato Grosso do Sul), Itaú de Minas (Minas Gerais), Pinheiro Machado (Rio Grande do Sul), Nobres (Mato Grosso), Rio Branco (Parana), Rio Negro (Rio de Janeiro) and Sobradinho (Federal District) units.

The process executed by Votorantim Cimentos has already eliminated over two million tires and was the winner of the CNI award, in the Ecology category.