The European PVC industry reaffirmed its commitment to sustainable development last week at the VinylPlus Sustainability Forum (VSF) 2021 #TOWARDS2030 with a signatory ceremony to launch VinylPlus 2030.
The VSF2021 was held as a hybrid event, live from Brussels with an online audience, and brought together more than 530 participants from 44 countries. Keynote speakers were Ondrej Knotek, Member of the European Parliament, who talked about the importance of strengthening the recovery and resilience of the European industry in the post-Covid era, and Werner Bosmans, Policy Officer at DG ENV at the European Commission, who highlighted the European policies on plastics in the circular economy. Along with the launch of the next Commitment, VSF2021 celebrated the completion of the second 10-year Voluntary Commitment of the Europe PVC industry and its main achievements of the last two decades since the launch of the first 10-year voluntary commitment, Vinyl 2010, in 2000.
“As a united European PVC industry, we accomplished a lot. While we have much to be proud of, we know that these achievements are only milestones on the road to a sustainable future,” VinylPlus Managing Director Brigitte Dero said. “Therefore, in order to build an even more ambitious programme, we worked alongside Accenture in 2020 for a three-month long open process of external consultation to gather input on key sustainability drivers, challenges and opportunities for the PVC industry to respond to in the next decade.”
The VinylPlus Product Label Awards Ceremony recognised four companies, Epwin, Finstral, Internorm and profine, all partners of VinylPlus, who were awarded the VinylPlus®Product Label in 2020. The Product Label is granted to companies who offer PVC products with the highest sustainability performance. The VinylPlusProduct Label is the very first certification scheme that has been recognised as Responsible Sourcing Certification Scheme within BREEAM, the world’s best-known green building standard, for plastic building and construction products.
The next 10-year Commitment of the PVC value chain identifies three ‘pathways’: Scaling up PVC value chain circularity; Advancing towards carbon neutrality and minimising our environmental footprint; and Building global coalitions and partnering for the SDGs. The three pathways encompass twelve key action areas and 39 targets that outline concrete steps to be taken by the European PVC industry to continue improving the sustainability performance of PVC.
The VSF2021 #TOWARDS2030 closed with the signatory ceremony, launching the VinylPlus 2030 Commitment that will build on VinylPlus’ 20+ years of progress and achievements to accelerate the transition towards a more sustainable and circular future with even more ambitious goals.