Having reached a voluntary target to recycle an additional 200,000 tonnes of material by 2010, the European PVC industry has moved the goalposts with the launch of the VinylPlus commitment. Ben Messenger looks at what this means for self regulation across Europe.
Across the globe governments and other stakeholders are increasingly looking towards ‘light touch’ legislation, with the aim of encouraging industries towards environmentally and socially responsible self regulation. This can be seen in the EU’s goals on sustainable growth in its Europe 2020 growth strategy, and in the UK with the recent Waste Review leaning towards voluntary agreements and reducing the burden of regulation on businesses.
For some the idea that big business is capable of regulating itself in a socially and 
environmentally responsible fashion is hard to swallow, and indeed such ambitions are often met with skepticism. However, others argue that it is almost impossible for politicians to draw up fair and effective legislation to govern industries they have little technical understanding of. As governments and policy makers around the world struggle with the dichotomy of trying to restore their fragile economies to health in a sustainable manner, it’s easy to understand why the idea that industries can self regulate is appealing. But can it work? Perhaps the best indicator that it can, at least given the right backing from within, is the European polyvinyl chloride (PVC) industry’s success with just such a scheme over the past decade.
PVC – often referred to as vinyl – is one of the most widely used polymers in the world, with applications in the construction, automotive, and electronic industries, among others. By the year 2000 some 8.3 million tonnes of PVC was being used in European products with an estimated value of Ђ75 billion.
However, with the sheer volume of PVC being produced, combined with a lack of available recycling options and concerns over certain additives, in the late 1990s the industry began to come under pressure from the European Union to tackle these issues or face the prospect of having regulations imposed. In an effort to head these regulations off at the pass, and also to make a step forward, in 2000 the European PVC industry signed a voluntary commitment to achieve measurable targets on the collection and recycling of post-consumer PVC waste, and to phase out certain additives over the following ten years.
Targets
One of the key targets of this voluntary commitment, formed under the name Vinyl 2010, was to collect and recycle 200,000 tonnes of unregulated post consumer PVC waste each year. The industry also committed to a research programme to develop new recycling and recovery technologies, including feedstock recycling and solvent based technologies.
In comparison to the quantities of PVC being produced, the target to recycle 200,000 tonnes may not sound so ambitious, but as Helmuth Leitner, general manager of the European Council of Vinyl Manufacturers explains, a great deal of the PVC being produced is used in products that have a life expectancy of many decades. Furthermore, the 200,000 tonne target was in addition to the volumes already targeted for recycling by existing EU legislation, such as the directives covering end-of-life vehicle, packaging and Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment.
In 1999 PVC was often dismissed as being ‘unrecyclable’, and there was virtually no infrastructure across Europe for its collection or processing. One of the keys to progressing from this situation and allowing Vinyl 2010 to hit its targets was its creation in 2004 of the Recovinyl initiative. This initiative provided financial incentives to start-up the collection of PVC waste from non-regulated waste streams, in particular from the building and construction sector. As a result, recycling volumes began to increase exponentially, growing from under 20,000 tonnes in 2005 to just over 260,000 tonnes by 2010.
To meet its recycling target it was important that programme nurtured the development of effective, industrial scale recycling processes. PVC compounds are 100% recyclable through two principal techniques – mechanical recycling where PVC waste is ground into small piece, and feedstock recycling where PVC waste is broken down into its chemical constituents.
One of the most significant recycling developments funded by Vinyl 2010 is the Vinyloop® PVC recycling process, which separates the useful PVC compound from other materials by selective dissolution and filtration, and precipitates it into microgranules of PVC compound.
Source: Waste Management World
By Ben Messenger