Europe on track for PVC recycling target

Europe – According to VinylPlus, the European PVC industry’s sustainable development programme, a record 362 076 tonnes of PVC was recycled last year, keeping the sector on track to meet its target of 800 000 tonnes recycled annually by 2020. The result for last year was presented at the Vinyl Sustainability Forum 2013 held last week in the Turkish city of Istanbul.

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, VinylPlus points out. Its 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.

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 UK certification body BRE.

For more information, visit www.vinylplus.eu