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Zinc extractor Steel Cycle wins Environment Ministry award for waste management

Published: 05 Dec. 2025, 18:09 Updated: 07 Dec. 2025, 16:56

KIM MIN-YOUNG
[email protected]

Steel Cycle Corporation Vice Chairman Choi Min-seok, fourth from left, receives the Minister of Environment Award. [KOREA ZINC]

Steel Cycle, a zinc extraction subsidiary of Korea Zinc, won an award from the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment for its role in effective waste management.

The company announced that Vice Chairman Choi Min-seok received the Minister of Climate Award at the 2025 Workplace Waste Management Personnel Capacity Building Workshop held over two days on Jeju Island on Thursday and Friday.

Steel Cycle is a specialized resource recovery firm that extracts the mineral from diverse industrial waste materials, such as steelmaking dust, once disposed of in landfills and responsible for additional environmental contamination, and provides the recovered zinc as a raw material for smelting.

Utilizing rotary hearth furnace processing technology for direct reduction ironmaking and the recycling of iron-bearing waste materials, the corporation said it produces approximately 50,000 tons of zinc hydroxide annually, supplying it as secondary raw material to Korea Zinc.

The corporation said this “diversifies Korea Zinc's raw material sources, reduces environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from ore mining and contributes to establishing an environmentally friendly circular structure and enhancing sustainable management capabilities through carbon neutrality.”

“We are honored that our efforts to build a circular economy through our resource circulation business have been recognized not only by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy but also by the Ministry of Climate Change,” said Steel Cycle Corporation Vice Chairman Choi Min-seok. “We will continue to expand our resource recycling business and investments, striving to lead the domestic circular economy industry and fulfill our social responsibilities as a company.”

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [[email protected]]