Circular Mining: The Journey to the Future at Vale

Photo: Vale Archive

Historically, productive sectors have adopted a linear model characterized by resource extraction, consumption, and disposal. Alongside this, society’s growing concern with industrial sustainability has generated significant environmental pressures, such as greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and waste accumulation.

In the mining sector, the generation of waste rock and tailings, materials that have no economic or commercial value, can be revisited through the lens of evolving reprocessing technologies. This opens the possibility of shifting from a linear model to a circular one.

Given today’s reality and the urgent need for transformative measures, this logic is no longer efficient. We need a model that generates prosperity while regenerating the planet.

Circular economy emerges as an alternative for sustainable development, an approach that seeks to maximize resource value throughout its life cycle, minimize waste, and regenerate ecosystems. One of the pillars for addressing the climate crisis must be the transformation of production processes in key sectors of the global economy. Vale is part of one of these sectors, and here we call this transformation Circular Mining.

Circular Economy: The Answer to Complex Challenges

Mining, as part of the global economy’s production process, plays a fundamental role in leaving a positive legacy for the planet by contributing to a transition toward significant CO₂e emission reductions, implementing new energy solutions, and ensuring the responsible use of mineral reserves. Circularity emerges as a resilient approach to address current challenges for the benefit of future generations. In other words, it is a strategic lever to make mining more sustainable, innovative, and socially responsible.

Studies across various sectors have highlighted the benefits of the circular economy: cost reduction, increased operational efficiency, stakeholder engagement, and strengthened organizational resilience. In the mining sector, adopting this approach means aligning with societal demands and regulatory frameworks, ensuring business longevity and reducing socio-environmental risks.

In mining, circular economy principles encourage rethinking waste management practices, sharing and generating socio-environmental value, and adopting innovative technologies that enable ecosystem regeneration. Integrating these principles into operations allows companies to reduce their ecological footprint and create new economic opportunities by turning waste into valuable resources.

The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) offers a perspective on circular economy, defining it as an economic system that prioritizes maximizing the value of materials and products throughout their entire life cycle. According to this view, circularity translates into resource efficiency in production and consumption, minimizing environmental impacts, reducing waste generation, and limiting the release of harmful substances into the environment.

Within this context, ICMM encourages mining companies to develop circular solutions that increase resource efficiency, minimize waste, and generate positive impacts for surrounding communities and ecosystems. To achieve this, it presents a circularity framework that covers both the production process, process circularity, and the post-transformation stage, product circularity.

In practice, the concept of circularity in mining involves rethinking the entire production process, which includes integrating advanced technologies, reprocessing tailings, reusing waste rock, developing co-products, and redesigning value chains so that nothing is wasted. By doing so, the mining industry can reduce its ecological footprint and unlock new economic opportunities.

Mining’s Role in the Energy Transition

Decarbonizing the global economy requires more metals, and naturally, more minerals, for producing steel for wind turbines, copper for transmission lines, nickel and lithium for batteries, rare earth elements for electric vehicles, and many others. This growing demand, combined with the gradual depletion of primary sources, puts pressure on the sector to find smarter and more sustainable solutions to ensure future supply.

Circular mining is one of the answers to this challenge. By reducing the generation of waste rock and tailings and reusing already extracted materials, the sector commits to more responsible mining practices, focused on meeting global demand with increasingly ethical and sustainable operations. This approach enables better use of mineral resources, minimizes socio-environmental impacts, delivers CO₂ emission benefits, and reduces the need for new disposal structures.

It is believed that the global transition to a low-carbon economy will only succeed if there is real awareness of the need to adopt circular models—an approach that contributes to climate, biodiversity, and community well-being.

Vale’s Circular Mining Program - Waste to Value

To turn this vision into reality, Vale created the Circular Mining Program: Waste to Value, a strategic initiative that integrates processes, technologies, and people to transform waste rock and tailings into resources. It is a transversal program with solid governance and active participation from senior leadership, connecting operations to the company’s strategy and contributing to positive results.

Before the program’s creation, Vale treated its waste piles and dams as environmental liabilities, operating them as such. Even when upstream dam decommissioning became mandatory, the process, designed linearly, consisted of removing material from the required structures and storing it elsewhere, still maintaining the environmental liability.

With Waste to Value, Vale can redefine its largest waste streams, turning them into assets for the company and generating value for both the business and society.

Several tests for tailings reuse were already occurring in operations in a decentralized manner without proper benefit tracking. However, with the program, Vale mapped initiatives, accelerated activities, began producing in a circular and safe way, shared knowledge to create new initiatives, engaged all necessary areas, and properly measured the positive impact of these operations.

The program aims for Vale to achieve 10% of its iron ore production from circular sources by 2030. It operates through value levers along the iron ore production chain, including reducing waste generation and reprocessing materials from piles and dams, either for iron ore production or for developing co-products.

Innovation in the production process includes beneficiation technologies, blending, mass recovery, new solutions for mining piles and dams, acceleration of new businesses, expansion of product offerings to open new markets, and investment in research and development for new products (co-products) derived from waste rock and tailings.

Currently, the Waste to Value Program potentially encompasses more than 150 initiatives related to iron ore production from circular sources at various maturity levels. It has already delivered positive results, reaffirming Vale’s commitment to sustainability and shared value creation.

Notable cases monitored by Waste to Value include:

• Reprocessing of tailings accumulated over 37 years at the Gelado Dam (Pará, Brazil), located within the Carajás National Forest in the Amazon. Using 100% electric dredges and pumps powered by renewable energy—a 2024 ICMM case study—the high-quality pellet feed material is magnetically concentrated and sent to the plant for beneficiation.

• Reuse of material from waste rock piles at the Serrinha Mine (Minas Gerais, Brazil), with average iron content above 50%, during the process of structure decharacterization, reducing operational and geotechnical risks. This process actively involved surrounding communities, reinforcing Vale’s commitment to its social license to operate.

• Production of co-products: sustainable sand, commercialized by the startup Agera; and paving blocks produced for internal use or donation to projects supported by Vale. Both are produced in Vale’s own facilities using tailings as raw material.

• Despite the recognized benefits that circular economy and circular mining bring to their ecosystems, there are many implementation challenges. For Vale, these challenges have also been significant obstacles worth highlighting (though not limited to):

• Engaging key stakeholders in the implementation process to demonstrate the importance of circular mining and encourage them to adopt a new perspective, shifting from a linear to a circular view.

• Technical challenges in operationalizing reuse, as it involves intervening in an already consolidated site. This requires dedicated teams for specific tests and surveys, plant trials, equipment relocation, etc.

• Encouraging various agencies and the mining industry to define concepts for circular mining or circular economy applied to mining processes, something entirely new until now.

• Measuring benefits and indicators for each initiative, requiring validation with multiple internal areas and external bodies.

• Developing disruptive projects to think beyond waste rock and tailings reuse.

Overcoming or addressing these challenges transformed Waste to Value from the dream of a specific area into a company-wide commitment, with leadership sponsorship and deployment across all areas. All Vale operations already have some Circular Mining initiative underway or under study, resulting from strong stakeholder engagement and management efforts driven by the program.

Concrete Results

The year 2024 was the first year the program measured results from initiatives already implemented and in production. Vale’s Integrated Report published in 2025, which highlights the main milestones of the previous year, presented the first results of Waste to Value, showing positive impacts for the company, our key stakeholders, and society. The main tangible and published results of the program are:

• Production of 12.7 million tons of iron ore from circular sources. This production represented 4% of the company’s total output reported in 2024, demonstrating the program’s potential for Vale in its very first year of implementation.

• Production of 1.4 million tons of sustainable sand produced at the Brucutu site from tailings. This product replaces natural sand, is certified for use in the construction industry, helps reduce pressure on ecosystems, and contributes to curbing predatory sand extraction. Sustainable sand is sold to various Brazilian states and donated to local municipalities for use in public works.

• Our circular production initiatives demonstrably emit less CO₂e than conventional mining production. In 2024, we achieved a reduction of 23,000 tons of CO₂e emissions compared to traditional processes, equivalent to removing approximately 14,000 cars from circulation for one year.

• In addition to CO₂e emission benefits, the Circular Mining Program also reduced energy consumption by 304 TJ in 2024, enough to power more than 40,000 Brazilian homes for one year. These indicators further reinforce the program’s importance and its positive impact on the environment and society, especially for surrounding communities.

It is also worth noting that using deposited materials leads to the decommissioning and/or decharacterization of dams and piles, resulting in one of the most relevant outcomes: reducing people’s exposure to associated risks, which also generates a positive social impact, even if intangible.

Moreover, for operations, adopting circular practices directly maximizes the use of mineral resources and tends to extend mine life, preserving them, as we rethink how the mining industry produces its goods, bringing greater long-term benefits for both the company and all stakeholders involved.

With significant results in its first year, Waste to Value consolidates itself as the largest Circular Mining Program in the world, ensuring the company’s commitment to the topic and to sustainability.

Science and Technology as Accelerators

Implementing circular processes in a traditional industry requires investment and commitment. Vale has invested in several areas to make this new way of mining possible, further driving innovation and competitiveness in the business.

Examples of these investments include:

• Technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning are being used to improve ore grade predictability.

• Real-time monitoring aimed at reducing variability in the material being processed and maximizing mass recovery.

• New process routes that optimize efficiency and tend to reduce costs, particularly regarding the use of mining equipment powered by fossil fuels.

• In addition to implementing circular processes, the company has been working on decarbonization initiatives that position it as a leader in the transition to sustainable, low-carbon mining, based on a neutrality strategy. In summary, Vale’s decarbonization commitments are:

• Consume 100% renewable electricity worldwide by 2030 (this commitment was achieved in Brazil in 2023);

• Reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 33% by 2030 compared to 2017;

• Reduce net Scope 3 emissions by 15% by 2025 compared to 2018;

• Achieve net-zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2050.

Additionally, there is constant and growing investment in Research and Development to improve processes, develop new mining technologies, and create new co-products from materials currently considered mining waste.

In April 2025, Vale signed an agreement with the Federal University of Minas Gerais to establish the Circular Mining Colab, with an expected investment of R$6 million to enable joint solutions with academia, mining companies, startups, and relevant organizations.

This combination of science, technology, and innovation ensures that circularity becomes viable for the mining sector, focusing on process improvement, resource optimization, and achieving global targets.

Collaboration and Public Policy

The transition to circular mining cannot be done in isolation; on the contrary, it requires collaboration among companies, universities, startups, governments, and civil society. It also depends on a favorable regulatory environment that encourages material reuse, technological innovation, and the creation of new markets for co-products.

Global organizations such as ICMM, Copper Mark, and the World Gold Council are increasingly engaged in expanding knowledge, developing standards, and influencing public policy.

A Legacy of Regenerative Mining

Circularity in mining is not just a business opportunity—it is a necessity to ensure the planet’s future. By turning waste into value, we are transforming the very concept of mining. This is the essence of Vale’s ambition to be a climate leader—going beyond impact reduction to create positive value for society and the environment.

Vale’s Circular Mining Program is an invitation for the entire industry to rethink its models, innovate, and collaborate to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.

For Vale, circularity is more than a trend—it is a strategy that reinforces the company’s position as a protagonist of a new era in mining.

This is the journey to the future that has already begun!

References

• Bocken, N. M. P., Short, S. W., Rana, P., & Evans, S. (2016). A literature and practice review to develop a tool for sustainable business model innovation. Journal of Cleaner Production, 65, 42-56.

• ICMM. (2024). Tools for Circularity. Disponível em: https://www.icmm.com/en-gb/guidance/innovation/2024/tools-for-circularity.

• Murray, A., Skene, K., & Haynes, K. (2017). The Circular Economy: An interdisciplinary exploration of the concept and application in a global context. Journal of Business Ethics, 140(3), 369-380.

• Prieto-Sandoval, V., Jaca, C., & Viles, E. (2018). Towards a consensus on the circular economy: A systematic review of the literature. Journal of Cleaner Production, 179, 605-616.