INNOVATION | HEALTHCARE
Above: HPRC, UKB and Tomra have carried out sorting trials in Germany
unifies the work of previous health sector initiatives including the PVCMed Alliance, VinylPlus Med, and VinylPlus PharmPack in one coordinated platform. “VinylPlus Healthcare was created to bring together expertise and efforts from different initiatives, ensuring a more coordinated and effective approach,” said Ole Grøndahl Hansen, Project Leader of VinylPlus Healthcare. “With this platform, we hope to foster a more nuanced debate on vinyl in the healthcare sector – one that recognises both its technical benefits and its evolving sustainability profile.”
PVC progress In its Progress Report 2025 (covering recycling activities in 2024), VinylPlus discussed healthcare developments in addition to other sectors, such as construction. In 2024, 23 hospitals were part of the VinylPlus Med programme and eight more were due to come online in 2025. In France, a number of hospitals worked with
Terra, a circular economy specialist, and Medtronic studying the feasibility of recycling. Dialysis lines, soft PVC medical devices and rigid PVC video- laryngoscope blades, which are widely used in medical settings, could make a significant contribu- tion to medical PVC recycling in the future. Another project in France explored recycling single use PVC medical devices such as tubing and masks into new products for healthcare settings such flooring components. Many doses of medication are safely delivered in aluminium/PVC blister packs and the VinylPlus PharmPak project aimed to show in a study how effectively blister packs can be recycled. Larger scale trials at Fraunhofer IVV, Dresden, Germany, found that dissolution technology could be used with feed from blister packs to successfully make rigid films. These could be re-used in blister packs. Mechanically recovered materials from blister packs can be used in profiles and PVC pipes. With its initiation last year, one of VinylPlus
30 PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD | January/February 2026
Healthcare’s first activities was to commission Aimplas in Spain to do a study on recycling flexible PVC widely used in medical devices. Findings from the study confirm that flexible PVC can be mechanically recycled up to six times without compromising its technical properties. These findings support vinyl’s key role in a circular healthcare economy, said VinylPlus Healthcare. The use of PVC leads to reduced waste, optimised resource efficiency and maintaining the highest standards of patient safety, it said. The recycling study strengthens the knowledge base on vinyl’s recyclability and underscores the need to expand collection and recycling efforts in healthcare and elsewhere, said VinylPlus. Charlotte Röber, Managing Director, said: “It is well estab- lished that rigid PVC can be recycled several times without significant loss of quality. Now, the Aimplas study has confirmed that it also applies to soft applications. This reinforces vinyl’s strong position in mechanical recyclability.” In February this year, at the closing event for the
Select4Care collaborative project, VinylPlus Healthcare presented the current status of medical PVC plasticisers, highlighting how substitution of DEHP with safe, regulated plasticisers is well advanced. “This progress is a key enabler for recycling in practice across most medical applica- tions and directly supports the development of viable recycling schemes,” it said. Discussions at the event also considered the
requirements needed to scale up medical PVC recycling: selective collection at hospital level, strong material knowledge, informed design choices, and clear, consistent regulatory frame- works across the value chain. VinylPlus Healthcare said that several are actively participating in a dedicated medical PVC recycling scheme that has been operational in Belgium since 2022, and this experience can inform future work. Participants went on site visits to AZ Jan Portaels
in Vilvoorde, a hospital actively collecting medical vinyl, and to De Loods Nekker in Mechelen, a dismantling hub operating within the social economy. “Clean, well-sorted medical PVC tubing and masks ready for recycling clearly demonstrated how careful collection, dismantling and handling enable high-quality recycling in practice,” said VinylPlus Healthcare. Further discussions considered the next steps
for strengthening existing schemes. This focused in particular on how co-collection with other hospital waste streams, such as blue wraps and surgical trays, can be optimised to improve logistics efficiency while maintaining material quality.
www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com
IMAGE: HPRC
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