Right: Fitt’s three-layer


garden hose is made largely


from recycled PVC


processing | PVC recycling For example, a new three-layer garden


hose from Fitt of Italy has a low environmental footprint because it is made largely from recycled PVC. The inner layer of the hose is


made from recycled material collected from customers and processed by VinyLoop. This accounts for up to 95% of the hose. The middle layer (made from polyester thread) main- tains pressure resistance and the outer layer is made from virgin PVC with high resistance to chemicals and abrasion and is visually appealing. Customers are given a discount on the hose if


they return their old one for recycling. “This does two things for us: it helps ensure a


steadier flow of recyclable material; and it keeps our customers coming back,” said Luca Battaglia, R&D material manager at Fitt. “Consumers are aware of the need to recycle, and this raises awareness on how they can do it.” FITT estimates the number of these hoses will


quadruple by the fourth year on the market. A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) has shown that the Fitt


garden hose saves 30% in energy, 30% in CO2 and 50%


in water. “It’s the first PVC garden hose made from a post-


consumer recycling system,” said Battaglia. “It’s win-win-win for the circular economy.”


Medical alert RecoMed, the UK-based scheme for recycling medical PVC waste, has now been extended to 10 hospitals. The scheme, set up in 2014, collects and recycled


single-used waste PVC medical devices including medical tubing and blood bags. It is run by project partners Axion Consulting and the British Plastics


PVC recycling in Europe, thousand tonnes


600 500 400 300 200 100 Source: VinylPlus, 2017 22 0 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016


Federation (BPF), and is funded by VinylPlus. Provided free of charge, RecoMed recycling bins are sited on wards next to non-infectious clinical waste bins and staff are given instruction on what items can be accepted. Daily collections are taken to a central waste hold from where the RecoMed team deliver them


to the specialist recycler. Axion says that PVC is used


to make around 40% of all medical devices.


Cable re-use Replast is a Czech company whose entire product


range – mainly flooring mats, but also some extruded profiles such as ramps – is made from recycled PVC cable.


The company says that it processes around 27


tonnes of cables every day – amounting to around 60,000km of cables each year. The material is imported by its sister company, Recyklo. Replast’s flooring products have high physical and


chemical resistance and high heat insulation, it says, as well as providing a non-slip surface and fire resistance. The products are used in warehouses, workshops, production halls and indoor exhibition areas, and elsewhere.


Filtering PVC In addition to industry recycling schemes, a number of recycling machinery specialists have some products that are targeted specifically PVC. Fimic has developed a new filter that is aimed


specifically at PVC processing. Its RAS technology is based on collecting a high level


of contamination inside a hollow blade holder, and discharging it based on a pre-set pressure. It has been modified to recycle PVC electrical cables, which are difficult to recycle and contain high levels of copper, aluminium, rubber and other plastics. Because of the level of contamination – usually


above 20% – the machine is set in continuous mode. This allows the blade holder to keep slowly scraping the stainless steel screen and gradually accumulate the removed contamination. Thanks to the 150 micron laser screen and its high open area, this plastic material – usually considered unmanageable – has been success- fully processed by four separate end users. The modified Fimic filter still features fast cover opening and a rapid changeover times of between 15 (for the RAS400) and 50 minutes (for RAS700) – compared to


PIPE & PROFILE EXTRUSION | May 2017 www.pipeandprofile.com


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