Report debunks recycling claims
18 Jun 2004
A report by the GrassRoots Recycling Network (GRNN) claims to provide evidence that bottles made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pose significant harm to community recycling programs.
"The vinyl industry's pro-environmental spin on PVC is that the material is recyclable. But our report demonstrates that PVC recycling does not exist, cannot exist, and is not wanted by the plastics recycling industry," says Toral Jha, GRRN's Project Coordinator.
GRRN's report, "Message in a Bottle: The Impacts of PVC on Plastics Recycling," examines the extent to which PVC used in bottles and containers is recycled.
While PVC makes up only a small fraction of the container market, its small presence has a dramatic impact on the recycling of other plastic containers - widely regarded as the most well developed plastics recycling market.
PVC bottles, used for packaging many popular cooking oils, shampoos, lotions, and pet products are often confused by consumers as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) because of the visual similarity of the two materials.
The report claims that even highly sensitive mechanical sorting equipment used by recycling companies has difficulty distinguishing the two types of plastics. This confusion results in the contamination of PET during the recycling process and the destruction of the more valuable PET material.
"Though PVC and PET share visual similarities, their physical and chemical properties make them fundamentally incompatible," says David Wood, GRRN's Executive Director.
"Of specific concern is that during the melting process of plastics recycling, PVC burns at the temperature needed to simply melt PET. This ruins the PET batch, the processing equipment, and undermines successful PET recycling efforts," continues Wood.
The contamination of PET recycling by even small amounts of PVC raises serious concern about communities already participating in or moving towards so-called "all bottle" curbside recycling collection programs, which accept PVC and other plastics in addition to PET and HDPE. Although waste hauling companies and the plastics industry advocate such programs as a method for recovering more of the highly valued plastics, such systems instead only propagate the myth that PVC can be recycled and may well undermine well-developed community recycling programs.
"PVC's lingering presence in the bottle market jeopardises successful PET recycling. Safer, economical alternative exist to using PVC and a number of companies have already switched away from dangerous PVC. We are calling upon consumers and businesses to press PVC out of the market, and on our colleagues in the recycling industry to protect their investments from the PVC menace," concluded GRRN's Toral Jha.
