Keep Georgia Green and Clean
With all the activity centered around Downtown Atlanta this month, I’m reminded of the sustainability efforts supported by the FIFA World Cup matches. Thousands of volunteers are on hand, encouraging fans to recycle and limit plastic waste. It’s an impressive testament to both corporate and civic leadership to be able to host such grand events without compromising resiliency initiatives.
One such initiative is the partnership between AMB Sports and Entertainment and aluminum company Novelis called Recycle for Good, whereby cans, cups and bottles from events are recycled to fund Habitat for Humanity homes.
In 2016, Novelis reported that more than $70 million worth of aluminum – one of the rare materials that is infinitely recyclable – went to landfills annually in Georgia. That same year, it partnered with the Atlanta Falcons to ask fans attending games at the Georgia Dome to recycle 3 million bottles and cans needed to build the first Habitat home. Novelis provided bags in the tailgate areas for fans to collect items, had drop-off locations throughout the stadium and a sorting program on site. It recycled the materials at its plant in Greensboro and then donated the money to Habitat to be used to build a home in Atlanta’s historic Westside.
Coca-Cola announced in 2024 that 99% of its packaging around the world was recyclable.
After Mercedes-Benz Stadium opened in 2017, AMB – the parent organization of the Falcons and the Atlanta United – took over the partnership with Novelis. Recycle for Good hit the 9 million bottle, cup and can mark by early 2022 and dedicated its third Habitat house that June. A fourth home went up in 2023.
Novelis also works with State Farm Arena and the Atlanta Hawks. In 2021, the group unveiled Full Court Press, a sculpture in the shape of the Hawks logo made of 404 pounds of upcycled aluminum bottles, cups and cans.
Full Court Press, the sculpture created from 404 pounds of upcycled aluminum bottles, cups and cans. Photo credit: AMB Sports + Entertainment
In 2022, State Farm Arena became the first sports and entertainment venue to receive TRUE Platinum certification for zero waste, which means it kept more than 90% of its waste from landfills. In April, it announced that it diverted more than 13 million pounds of waste in the past five years.
The arena and the Hawks also work with Smurfit Westrock, a cardboard company with an office in Sandy Springs. It oversees an area dedicated to sorting waste generated during events.
I hope the World Cup supersizes recycling efforts this summer. When you think of how many people attend games, you can see the potential for impact. It’s something to think about as you throw away your cans, cups and bottles at the end of a game.
But sports teams and venues aren’t the only ones getting into the recycling game. In 2013 Novelis partnered with Jaguar Land Rover to pioneer a “closed loop” recycling system where the automaker reuses aluminum scrap generated from automotive stamping. Novelis has since expanded the program throughout the auto industry.
Last year it collaborated with European automotive company, The Future is NEUTRAL, which recycles parts and materials from cars no longer in use. The idea behind the partnership is to scale up production of a circular aluminum alloy with over 95% recycled content. This should help Novelis achieve its goal of 75% average recycled content in all aluminum products by 2030.
Other local leaders in the recycling field include Cox Automotive, which announced a milestone this year in its EV Battery Solutions business, having processed and recovered more than 10 million pounds of “black mass,” a material containing minerals that can be reused to help produce new batteries.
Coca-Cola announced in 2024 that 99% of its packaging around the world was recyclable. It says last year, more than 29 million plastic bottles were recycled worldwide, enough to fill seven Olympic-sized pools.
Home Depot has eliminated a lot of its harmful packaging – redesigning some 1,280 packages from 2017 to 2023 to remove hard-to-recycle materials – with the goal of new packaging that is compostable, recyclable or made from recycled content by fiscal year 2027.
Radius Recycling, which collects, processes and recycles raw scrap metal, created an $11 million advanced aluminum separation system in Macon in 2021.
Copper recycler Aurubis opened a $340 million recycling and secondary-smelting facility at Augusta Corporate Park in 2024, and at that same location, PureCycle Technologies hopes to start construction no later than March 2028 on a $440 million initial investment to recycle plastics.
And in December 2025 Pratt Industries spent more than $120 million to open a corrugated box manufacturing facility in Warner Robins, the recycling facility’s 13th site in Georgia.
All recycling should start at home. So consider your own impact. 
Ben Young is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Georgia Trend.
