Welcome to the BPF Windows Group Recycling Page

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.

The scheme, which is independently audited, produces regular Progress Reports on all of the measureable schemes. These Progress Reports are freely available on the above Vinyl 2010 link (which will take you to www.vinyl2010.org where the reports can be downloaded).

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.  Tonnages are seeing significant growth, not only in the UK, but right across Europe.  

As tonnages of post consumer PVC products inevitably increase, the European industry is seeing the development of the technology and infrastructure to recycle them in commercially viable and environmentally beneficial schemes.

Please click here for further information on UK RecoVinyl recyclers. Regular Newsletters are also available from Axion Recycling, who facilitate the Recovinyl Scheme in the UK. Please sign up to these via info@axionrecycling.com. These are also available from BPF Windows Group Technical Executive Paul Jervis' website; www.pauljervis.net

If you should have any questions on the scheme, please contact Tim Marsden at the BPF.