Recycling of PVC plastics is one of the first fully effective recycling technologies developed and implemented worldwide. Although PVC is considered a relatively easy material to recycle, there are certain types of PVC which are not as easy to reprocess. Nevertheless, overall PVC recycling rate is growing across Europe especially in the last two years. In twenty fourteen, a total of four hundred and seventy five tons of waste PVC was recycled across the European Union, the waste was generated and deposited for recycling by hundred and sixty major companies in sixteen European member states.
The UK makes no exception and lines up quite well in terms of PVC recycling, especially PVC-U frames which are used mainly for the manufacturing of domestic and commercial property windows. In twenty fourteen PVC-U frames made up half of the overall amount of PVC recycled in the UK, the rest was made up of so called rigid and flexible PVC films, along with plastic pipework and cables/wiring.
The European Union initiative to recycle as much PVC waste as possible is also expected to expand further, and to include other sources of PVC waste, generated not just by industry, but also by healthcare – such as non-infectious hospital PVC waste like IV and oxygen bags. PVC waste recycling from the medical sector is the focus of an elaborate research program which aims to encompass the effective recycling of a wide range of PVC plastic waste from all industry and public sectors. The European level program is supposed to meet its goals by the year two thousand twenty, by consolidating and unifying regulations and practices of PVC recycling on regional and local level. One of the program’s main objectives is to recycle eight hundred tons of PVC waste in the next five years, along with at least one hundred tons of hard-to-recycle PVC waste – a challenge that will require a serious industrial scale rubbish removal effort. This will require the development and implementation of even more advanced recycling and processing technology throughout the European Union as a whole.
Case with the UK and the PVC recycling challenge seems to be working quite well so far as industry specialists and watchdog organisations are seeing a notable improvement in Great Britain’s PVC plastic recycling rates, as well as sustainable investment in the sector, which inevitably leads to technological improvement, better infrastructure and higher processing efficiency nationwide. In figures, the UK recycles more than one million post-consumer PVC-U window framing each year. This totals nearly twenty six thousand tons of recycled PVC waste annually. As suggested by statistics going back to twenty eleven, the UK’s overall PVC recycling rate comprises of about fifty percent PVC-U window framing. The total tonnage of PVC waste (not just window frames) recycled in UK is about fifty thousand tons. The positive change in recycling rates is also attributed to the newer, more efficient processing infrastructure (treatment and recycling facilities) appearing in different locations across Great Britain, as well as more effective PVC waste removal practices.