VinylPlus, the European PVC industry sustainable development programme, registered 362,076 tonnes of PVC recycled last year, keeping it on track to meet the challenge of recycling 800,000 tonnes per year by 2020.
A more comprehensive and wider scope for what constitutes “recycled PVC” has been adopted to include post-consumer and limited types of post-industrial PVC, as well as some of the regulated waste streams in the EU, said VinylPlus. The 2012 results were presented at the Vinyl Sustainability Forum 2013 in Istanbul.
VinylPlus Chairman Filipe Constant said the industry “is effectively moving from a model of resource consumption that follows a ‘take-make-use-throw away' linear pattern into a truly circular economy model which puts end-of-life materials back into the production stream extending the added-value of PVC's inherent durability and versatility”.
A number of VinylPlus taskforces are fully operational, studying how to incorporate renewable energy and raw materials, the sustainable use of additives and the environmental footprint of PVC production.
A VinylPlus product label concept for PVC products has been developed in collaboration with The Natural Step – an NGO providing input and guidance for the development of the VinylPlus programme – and the UK expert certification body BRE.