By Nitin Chitkara, Chief Executive Officer, MMCM
For the corporate world globally, sustainability has transformed into a core method of functioning from mere compliance. According to a CEO survey by PwC in 2025, one in three CEOs have confirmed that climate-friendly investments made over the past five years have indeed played a pivotal role in increasing revenues. As companies are gradually transitioning toward low-carbon business models, they have realised that laser focus on reducing emissions would not suffice. Material traceability instead is gaining spotlight as it has proved its potential with regards to demonstrating concrete climate accountability. It ensures visibility into how materials are extracted, used, recovered, and reused across their lifecycle. By doing so precious resources are not disregarded as waste but used to their maximum potential.
In today’s world, the challenge is not only the sheer volume of waste we generate but the lack of visibility, traceability, and accountability once a product reaches its end-of-life stage. Take electric vehicle batteries, for instance. They contain critical minerals that are limited in availability, environmentally intensive to extract, and increasingly vulnerable to future shortages.
This is where circularity becomes essential. By ensuring that these minerals are recovered safely, efficiently, and at a fraction of the environmental impact of virgin mining, industries can keep valuable materials in circulation and prevent resource scarcity. With proper traceability, climate-friendly recovery methods, and responsible recycling, these critical materials can seamlessly re-enter their manufacturing cycles and strengthen long-term supply security.
Unfortunately, the informal scrapping industry is not equipped with the appropriate tools and knowledge to contribute towards the same, leading to end-of-life becoming a landfill and not a resource. The industry loses crucial data on the adverse effects these materials can have on the environment. Thus, the opportunity to curate climate assets is completely lost. Industries face higher production costs due to repeated sourcing of new materials leading to an unhealthy spike in larger scope 3 emissions. An emission reduction strategy alone does not yield measurable progress.
In order to integrate circular economy principles in the scrapping process, it is important that materials are tracked end-to-end using digital IDs such as QR codes, barcodes, and blockchain records including environment footprints embedded during circularity. Digital traceability platforms provide lifecycle visibility, strengthening compliance and supply chain transparency.
Traceability enables companies to credibly demonstrate environmental, social and governance impact in disclosures, investor communication, and regulated markets. It also enables the closure of loops, facilitating the re-entry of resources in the manufacturing cycle. It empowers the circular economy by not only tracking the origin of materials, leading to reduced carbon footprint caused in manufacturing primary material, avoids greenwashing as it is backed by verifiable data but also tracks products beyond sale. Thereby managing end-of-life reuse, remanufacturing as well as recycling.
According to The United Nations Environment Programme the global climate outlook states ambition without accountability is no longer feasible in the current global context. Even countries with lower per-capita emissions are seeing a rapid rise in total emissions, highlighting the need for systemic change. Under such circumstances, material traceability and resource circularity become vital, ensuring that sustainability is not only claimed but proved through verifiable visibility into how resources are sourced and used, helping create measurable green impact.
