PVC | RECYCLING
dedicated collection system was launched in the US in October by Westlake Global Compounds, a global flexible and rigid PVC compounder and subsidiary of Houston-based Westlake Corp. The new Choose Pink pilot program, created in
collaboration with Houston Methodist hospital at its flagship Texas Medical Center location, will collect single-use healthcare items such as nasal cannulas and masks, oxygen tubing and saline bags from the hospital’s Outpatient Center. The collected material will be sent to Westlake
Dimex, a Marietta, Ohio, facility and subsidiary of the Westlake group that compounds recycled polymers, said Andy Antil, General Manager at Westlake Dimex. The materials will be reprocessed into durable consumer and industrial products such as commercial and retail runner matting, exercise equipment matting, dock edging for marine applica- tions and cord protection products for electrical and cable management applications, which will reduce the hospital’s carbon footprint, Antil said.
Medical PVC According to Westlake Global Compounds, other PVC medical device recycling programmes have been launched in the US cities of Atlanta, Chicago and Rochester, New York. The company is also a key partner of the PVCMed Alliance, which is the European Council of Vinyl Manufacturers’ (ECVM) value chain platform to raise awareness and promote best practices on the use of PVC in healthcare. ECVM is a founding member of VinylPlus and a division of the PlasticsEurope trade association representing plastics manufacturers in Europe. Westlake says advances in medical PVC circularity is not limited to medical devices. VinylPlus currently has a PharmPack project that aims to enhance the recyclability of PVC-based pharmaceutical blister packaging. VinylPlus Med is the Belgium-based pilot collections and recycling partnership launched in 2022 by VinylPlus to demonstrate that PVC waste from medical devices could be turned into REACH compliant recyclates of high quality then reused by PVC converters to make durable products for health- care settings. The project, which has been extended, initially involved Brussels-based hospital group Europe Hospitals to collect and sort single-use, non-contaminated PVC medical devices that do not contain classified phthalates from its operating rooms, intensive care unit and service care unit at two hospital sites. These streams are collected by waste management company Renewi for recycling by Belgian plastics recycler Raff Plastics. Evelyn Vass, Operational Director at Europe
www.compoundingworld.com
Hospitals, said involvement in the initiative helps the hospitals to significantly reduce their environmen- tal impact and operating costs. “We realised that our hospital, like other hospitals in Belgium, is a major polluter. Before, everything used to be inciner- ated,” Vass said. Since 2022, the VinylPlus Med scheme has expand- ed to 22 hospital sites, collecting a total volume equivalent to nearly 830,000 face masks. Currently, 400 bins are in place across these hospitals, with 60 pallet containers transporting waste to recyclers. To support this growth, Renewi has added two additional storage facilities in Belgium, while VinylPlus Med has also begun working with social economy partners to dismantle non-PVC components. The success of the VinylPlus Med scheme in Belgium has led to plans to expand the pilot program to France in 2024 involving Terra, a France consulting expert for the circular economy, and Medtronic, a healthcare technology company. The French pilot scheme will also include the recycling of rigid PVC medical devices such as disposable laryngoscope blades. VinylPlus Med said a handheld NIR device to detect the presence of orthophthalates in PVC waste has been developed and is being adopted by the British Plastics Federation, which will use it as part of a relaunch of its RecoMed takeback scheme in the UK. VinylPlus is also involved in the Select4Care
X
project, which aims to increase the recycling volumes of medical PVC in Belgium by improving device design for recycling and enhancing the collection and sorting logistics for medical plastic waste – from hospitals to recyclers and converters.
CLICK ON THE LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION: �
www.vinylplus.eu �
www.eppa-profiles.eu �
www.ufme.fr �
https://rewindo.de �
www.teppfa.eu �
https://erfmi.com �
www.aktion-pvc-recycling.de �
https://agpr.de �
www.recofloor.org �
www.westlakeglobalcompounds.com �
https://pvcmed.org �
https://pvc.org/
November 2024 | COMPOUNDING WORLD 31
Above: Westlake Dimex, which produces recycled
compounds at its facility in Marietta, Ohio, is taking part in a project to recycle
single-use healthcare items
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