In this interview, Brigitte Dero, Deputy General Manager of VinylPlus, explains how the PVC industry is tackling sustainability challenges.
Polyvinyl chloride, commonly abbreviated PVC, is the third-most widely produced plastic. Just think of vinyl records, cling films, insulation material, and other devices of daily use.
The European PVC industry, which today represents around 21,000 companies and employs half a million people, has put into practice VinylPlus, an integrated approach to deliver full-cycle product stewardship. This means continually improving production processes and products, investing in R&D and technology, minimising emissions and waste, as well as boosting collection and recycling.
VinylPlus has been selected as one of Cefic’s flagship initiatives on sustainability. In this interview, Brigitte Dero, Deputy General Manager VinylPlus, explains how the PVC industry is tackling sustainability challenges through cooperation along the entire value chain.
What is the VinylPlus Project?
The VinylPlus Project is a voluntary programme launched by the PVC industry in 2011. Our main goal is to establish a long-term sustainable development framework for the entire value chain across all 27 EU member states. The different stages of this chain are represented by our founding members who bring together resin and additive producers, as well as converters.
VinylPlus will run until 2020, but we will not stop there. VinylPlus, just like PVC, has been made to last. We will have to look back at what has been accomplished and then decide on which direction to take. We followed the same process with our previous 10-year-programme called Vinyl 2010.
What happened in the first programme, and what is happening now?
The new programme is more ambitious than the first one, which mainly looked at recycling targets and hazardous additives in PVC. The new programme introduces higher recycling targets. We are moving from 200.000 to 800.000 tonnes per year by 2020. That’s quite a lot. We also address the issue of ‘legacy additives’, substances that might not be authorised in the future, but are contained in recycled PVC. We will examine the emissions in more detail and will also look at the sustainable use of additives, continuing the phase-out of lead stabilizers, which started ten years ago and will be completed by 2015.
Who are your partners?
One of the characteristics of this voluntary programme is that everything we do is audited by external verifiers and checked by a monitoring committee, which is a unique structure in Europe. This committee is composed of representatives from the Commission’s DG Enterprise and DG Environment as well as academics, trade unions, industry representatives and NGOs. They meet twice a year to check our progress.
Furthermore, we have teamed up with an NGO called TNS, The Natural Step (http://www.naturalstep.org/). They help us engage with external stakeholders, such as authorities or the public.
How do you measure the success of your project?
Our auditors check the ongoing technical projects, for example to make sure that the numbers reported by the recyclers are correct. We also have a system to check the statistics related to lead consumption, which show if lead stabilizers are being replaced by other stabilizers which do not contain any harmful substances.
What are the major challenges for the project now?
The first challenge is on the regulatory side: REACH. That’s because REACH does not contain any guidance on how to deal with recycling. A substance like DEHP (a phthalate plasticizer), which was widely used in the past in flexible PVC, was the first one going through the authorisation process. The question is: Does the recycler have to apply for an authorisation? We work with the Commission and ECHA (http://echa.europa.eu/) to develop reasonable guidance for recycling under REACH. We don’t know the outcome yet, but if the costs were too high for the recyclers, that would be a big hurdle.
What do you expect from the years to come?
The first two years of work clearly demonstrate that the PVC industry is willing to move forward together. The need for cooperation is more important than ever in these difficult times of economic crisis and austerity. Reaching our goals goes beyond having the support of the PVC value chain. We also need the right policy environment across Europe. We are trying to ‘do more with less’, but in order to achieve that, we are going to need as many people on board as possible. I think we are on the right track.
On April 25/26, VinylPlus organized the Vinyl Sustainability Forum in Istanbul, Turkey. What were the main outcome/results?
The forum was a lively exchange of views between the PVC industry, policymakers, analysts and the media.
We discussed how our sector is striving for greater energy and resource efficiency while reducing its ecological footprint. We were able to present our latest numbers: VinylPlus had 362,076 tonnes of PVC recycled in 2002. We also registered a decrease of 76.37% in lead stabiliser consumption in the EU-27 compared to 2007 levels, well on track to complete the substitution by the end of 2015.
The progress of VinylPlus proves that we are moving 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.
Download VinylPlus Progress Report 2013
Read more about Vinyl Forum 2013
More about VinylPlus