Polyvinyl Chloride PVC -5

6 PVC and Sustainability


PVC's contribution is by no means limited to its products. The PVC industry is also setting a unique example in the process of working together as a supply chain in driving forward sustainable development.


There are many definitions of Sustainability and Sustainable Development, but it can best be defined by the three main pillars of sustainability; social, economic and environmental.


"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."


Economic Sustainability


The PVC industry has enduring pre-war origins and employs huge numbers of people worldwide across the supply chain, which is spread between large multinationals and SME's making a significant contributing to the growth of the global economy .



Social Sustainability:


Companies offer rewarding, long-term employment opportunities (including training opportunities), with safe working environments and whose products contribute to good quality homes, through energy efficient windows to the safe transportation of drinking water. Generally, PVC products are light-weight to install - thus a potential for fewer accidents, but far from just providing the windows and pipes for your property, cabling, ducting, roofline products are usually PVC.



Environmental Sustainability


In terms of environmental sustainability there are common elements in all studies (on PVC and other materials) consistent with reducing human impact on eco-systems:


With world population over over 7 Billion and growing we need to conserve scarce resources and we should minimise `human` land-usage in order to protect biodiversity by giving priority to essential uses (e.g. food crops). To achieve this, we need to minimise or eliminate waste by efficient use of materials and increase recycling rates - something that the PVC industry within Europe is committed to.



6.1 Environmental Impacts



The environmental impacts of any one material cannot be judged in isolation since the use of alternatives will not be without cost, either financially or to the environment. Materials that compete with PVC are often promoted as a more natural choice, indeed, `natural` does not equate to `better` or `more sustainable'.



Some competing materials claim environmental and sustainability advantages over PVC – this is usually based either on myths about the environmental impact of PVC or unjustifiably biased opinions about the competing materials.



6.2 Recycling of PVC


PVC window recycling


The structure and composition of PVC lends itself to being mechanically recycled, with reasonable ease, to produce good quality recycling material. As with most recycling streams, sorting is of the utmost importance to achieve optimal recycling of PVC materials.


Acrosss the world, the PVC industry has invested heavily to develop sophisticated recycling schemes to ensure that large amounts of PVC can be reused in a new generation of advanced energy efficient, sustainable products. This investment has meant that not just prodcution off-cuts are recycled but also products such as doors and PVC-U windows are recycled on a huge global scale.


PVC Windows Recycling


Whilst old windows are recycled, the process is far more complex that off-cuts due to contamination such as building debris (e.g. steel, concrete and sealants) which need to be removed before re-processing.