PVC | REGULATION
PHOTO: EUROCELL
PVC industry stands by its recycling record
The European PVC sector has made great progress in recycling since 2000 and companies are continuing their commitment. But legacy additives are a regulatory problem. By David Eldridge
In this year of increased public, political and regula- tory pressure on plastics waste, the success of PVC recycling in Europe can be held up as an exemplar of how much can be achieved by focussed plastics recycling programmes. From a standing start, the first PVC industry Voluntary Commitment, Vinyl 2010, reached a level of 260,000 tonnes of recycled PVC in 2010, when it was superseded by VinylPlus, the second programme which achieved a level of nearly 640,000 tonnes in 2017. Yet, such achievements can go unnoticed by politicians caught up in a storm of condemnation, as the case has been with plastics waste in 2018. One of the features of the EU’s Strategy for Plastics in January was a call for voluntary pledges from stakeholders to boost the uptake of recycled plastics. The response from VinylPlus was to ratchet up its existing goal of recycling 800,000 tonnes of PVC waste by 2020 to a new commitment to recycle 900,000 tonnes per year by 2025, and beyond that, 1m tonnes per year by 2030. The VinylPlus programme is communicated in an
www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com
annual Progress Report, through its Sustainability Forum and, of course, through direct contact with its members in the PVC industry, and with European Commission officials and wider stakeholders. In the current heated debate, VinylPlus is also attempting to make its voice heard online through political news websites in order to communicate to stake- holders what the programme has achieved and the ongoing initiatives it is a part of. In a sponsored article published in September on the Politico news site, Brigitte Dero, General Manager at VinylPlus, wrote: “We have been following the evolving EU debate on plastics with keen interest. The vote by MEPs in Strasbourg on single-use plastics is the latest chapter in what is likely to be a long story, and we are also playing our part in it. The Parliament report stated that: ‘Joint and coordinated actions by all stakeholders across the entire value chain, including consumers, are necessary in order to succeed and achieve an outcome that is advanta- geous for the economy, the environment, the climate and health.’ We could not agree more.”
Main image: Around
300,000 tonnes of PVC window profiles were recycled in Europe in 2017, says VinylPlus
� November/December 2018 | PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD 11
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36
