Emissions of carbon dioxide, dioxins, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter as well as use of non-renewable resources and energy are some important sustainability challenges for the Swedish steel industry. Much effort has been made, mainly by technical solutions, which to a high degree have decreased the emissions during the last 30 years. Technical solutions however will not be sufficient to reach sustainable development, stakeholder involvement is also necessary. Stakeholder theory states that stake­holder involvement must include a dialog between the stakeholders involved and the operation. The first step in this process is to identify which key issues the stakeholders find most important and then the organisation needs to start interact with its stakeholders. This thesis deals with such issues. Stakeholder preferences for environmental issues were assessed with conjoint analysis, Q-methodology and focus group discussions. The theory of planned behaviour was used to assess how attitudes were connected to background factors and a potential pro-environmental behaviour. Five studies have been carried out in the framework of this thesis. The studies include: a literature review, method evaluation, evaluation of environ­mental objectives in stakeholder groups, screening of relevant factors, evaluation of steel environmental characteristics, identification of barriers to the introduction of new materials and the im­pact of worry and risk perception on strategic environmental decisions. It can be concluded that the methods applied in the studies work well in eliciting preferences. It has been possible to show how different stakeholder groups as well as individuals prioritise environmental objectives and sustaina­bility issues. Since individuals within a stakeholder group vary considerably in preferences, the results from this thesis show the importance of illustrating results on an individual level instead of the traditional group level. Also, a method has been tested where the results were brought back to the respondents in order to stimulate discussions between different stakeholder groups.

The automotive industry is expected to transition from a net-consumer to a net-producer of aluminum scrap as aluminum-intensive vehicles (AIVs, i.e., Ford’s aluminum-bodied F-150) begin to reach end-of-life (EOL). In the past, the industry has downcycled aluminum scrap to meet the consumption demands of the automotive sector. With the shift to having a large supply of this scrap in the near future, the industry needs to recover and reuse EOL Al by utilizing a circular economic model, create value via an upcycling paradigm (vs downcycling). This work establishes a platform as to how the recycling industry can be restructured to create value in our waste streams and is organized in three segments: First, an analysis of the flow of automobiles at EOL was carried out from the perspective of recovery and reuse; a recycling rate for Al has been determined, and the factors that go into the dynamics of the recycling rate have been identified. Secondly, the current state of the market was surveyed to evaluate where improvements could be made to affect material collection and recovery. The latter led to compositional characterization of aluminum auto-shred to identify the alloys in the mixture, and thereby the needed intelligent sorting systems for upcycling. Thirdly, these results were used in a dynamic material flow model to predict how the composition of auto-shred will change due to increased aluminum usage and as a function of various end-of-life processing scenarios. The outcome and impact of this work is that we have established a platform that enables the ELV recycling industry to upcycle the large amount of Al that will be available in the near future. These results will be discussed and reviewed during this presentation.