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2. Products that accelerate more sustainable lifestyles

Steel is part of our everyday lifestyles, in products from drinks cans to cars to washing machines. Achieving more sustainable lifestyles is a shared challenge, and steel has a massive contribution to make – enabling packaging and goods that are strong, can be designed for reuse as well as being recyclable, require less energy to run and can ultimately reshape the way we live.

Why is this important to us?

A future of nine billion people enjoying high-quality lives will need products that use natural resources in ways that are ultra-efficient and help create what many now call the circular economy. The context is very different in developed and developing markets, but the answer is the same: innovation. To create and sustain quality lives we need to design more energy-efficient products using materials that can be reused and recycled – and which can be produced using fewer resources and without negative consequences for the environment or society.

The commercial imperative

What kind of challenges do we face?

Megatrends such as the low-carbon economy, electric vehicles and artificial intelligence are radically changing the way manufacturers think about their next product design. These challenges mean that their choice of materials are no longer based on solely on their cost, quality and suitability - there are other factors at play now. The design of cars, washing machines and food packaging need to be assessed in terms of their full lifecycle impacts, which makes it key to consider things like the strength, durability and recyclability of materials. The focus is shifting from the carbon emitted during a product’s use to emissions during its production as well. Years of strong lifecycle assessment work and successful innovation have put our steel at an advantage here, and we will need these more than ever to stay on the front foot.

What do we need to do?

We need to innovate to ensure that steel is continually anticipating and responding to the next challenge in sustainable lifestyles. We need to work with our customers to rethink the design of their products to promote reuse, to be at the forefront of new developments such as electric vehicles and artificial intelligence in order to ensure the unique properties of steel can be exploited to a maximum. We also need to provide the evidence to prove - through lifecycle analysis - where steel’s environmental footprint is better than other materials, and use this capability to demonstrate to the manufacturers– and society in general – the important role of innovative steel over the decades to come.

What is the potential to create value?

Steel is strong, safe, flexible and easily recyclable, which means it can be a big part of the answer to today’s environmental and social challenges. A tonne of steel also produces less CO₂ than either aluminium, magnesium or carbon fibre over its whole lifetime, thanks to its infinite recyclability. The high-strength steels we’ve developed to make cars lighter are a good example of the value we can create. Working with customers in packaging and white goods industries in similar ways, we can challenge their assumptions about packaging materials, and ensure that we continually innovate to meet and exceed their sustainability expectations. Though the challenges are clear, the opportunities are also exciting.

Our stakeholders’ expectations

Governments, regulators and NGOs are waking up to the need to make our modern lifestyles work with fewer resources and a lower environmental impact. For example, the automotive industry must meet stringent vehicle emissions limits in Europe and the US, so our automotive customers are looking for lighter materials. Manufacturers in industries like white goods and electrical equipment face their own version of these challenges. Meanwhile, regulations requiring the recycling of packaging materials have long been established in Europe and elsewhere.

Consumers also have higher expectations, and are more aware of the social and environmental credentials of what they buy. Where the price is comparable, many consumers prefer the greener alternative. This means that high-profile brands are seeing the benefits of being able to prove that their products and their supply chain are independently certified, meet social and labour standards set by multi-stakeholder groups, or can offer a demonstrable carbon benefit.

The outcome we need

Commercial designers and manufacturers in industries that contribute to our everyday lifestyles, such as automotive and packaging, choose steel because they understand that its strength, formability and recyclability are vital in developing innovative solutions for sustainable development.

Achieving our new outcome

Innovation can help us both to improve what we do now and to anticipate, develop and respond to new and disruptive technologies. Our global R&D team have developed the capacity – through the Sustainable Innovation Tool – to examine how every new research programme in our development pipeline can contribute to a more sustainable way of life.

We want to combine this research with our expertise in lifecycle assessment to drive sustainable innovation, and to help the manufacturers who buy our steel, as well as their customers and consumers, understand the opportunities sustainable steel can provide. We also want all our employees to understand and communicate the contribution our products make to sustainable development – and to help us work with our customers to create further value. Read more about our particular challenges and opportunities in the automotive, packaging industries.