PVC | INNOVATION
PVC’s practicality and versatility make it an excellent candidate for recycling and reuse opportunities. Mark Holmes reports on some recent initiatives
PVC recycling on track to meet 2020 target
PVC remains one of the most widely used polymers in the world, with its versatility providing applica- tions in a wide range of industrial, technical and household situations. Due to its light weight, durability and stability, PVC can offer energy, cost and material efficiency advantages in applications ranging from water distribution and building and construction to healthcare and transportation. The growing emphasis in the plastics industry for designing with recycling and reuse in mind is gaining traction in the PVC market. Window profiles can be recovered and re-extruded to make new windows, doors and building products, while the potential reuse of existing products for a second useful service life is increasingly being explored. The recycling and reuse of PVC has seen significant progress over the past two decades. At the centre of efforts in Europe is VinylPlus, the renewed ten-year Voluntary Commitment of the European PVC industry. The programme estab-
www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com
lishes a long-term framework for the sustainable development of the industry by tackling a number of critical challenges, in the EU-28, Norway and Switzerland. European PVC recycling in 2018 saw an increase
of 15.6% over the previous year. Results presented at the 2019 VinylPlus Sustainability Forum in Prague, Czech Republic in May, where the industry shared further progress towards increasing the sustainability performance of PVC, showed that 739,525 tonnes of PVC within its framework had been recycled in 2018. Despite regulatory constraints, VinylPlus General Manager Brigitte Dero announced that the PVC industry recycled 92.4% of the target for 2020 set by VinylPlus. The Recovinyl network (the European PVC industry’s recycling platform facilitating PVC waste collection and recycling) remains the main contributor, registering 734,568 tonnes of recycled PVC (a 16% increase on 2017). During the year, Recovinyl further improved its certification and
Main image: The European PVC industry recycled nearly 740,000 tonnes of mate- rial in 2018
November/December 2019 | PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD 37
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
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