The claim that PVC is not recyclable is simply not true. PVC, like all other thermoplastic materials, can be recycled relatively straightforwardly.  The primary aim of recycling is to elicit a net environmental benefit through reducing the use of primary resources and/or diverting resources from landfill.  The European PVC industry has most definitely achieved real successes in this regard, using the RecoVinyl scheme to co-ordinate the collection and recycling of post consumer PVC building products.  It has long been common practice to recover and recycle factory wastes and/or off-cuts after the window has been fabricated.  These materials are then incorporated with virgin polymer to produce further long life products including window profiles.

The RecoVinyl Scheme is a European wide initiative to collect and recycle post consumer PVC building products to support the Vinyl 2010 Voluntary Commitment. Consistently, since inception of the scheme the UK has led the way in the volume of PVC collected and recycled in Europe. Regardless of the materials involved, a potential barrier to cost-effective recycling of post use products is the ability to retrieve, economically, meaningful quantities of used products to supply a recycling scheme with its feedstock.  In Germany, PVC-U windows were commercially introduced some twenty years before they were in the UK.  Hence, German companies developed technologies to recycle post-use PVC products, which may arise as demolition wastes, for example.   As tonnages of post consumer PVC products inevitably increase, then the European industry will have the technology and infrastructure to recycle them in commercially viable and environmentally beneficial schemes.

Click here to download an overview note on the recycling of PVC.