Plastics News Europe - July/August 2019 - 23

pvc - vinylplus

While PVC is highly recyclable, legacy plasticisers and other additives remain a concern. A
field trip organised by VinylPlus to two recycling plants in the Netherlands shed light on
the issues that need to be resolved in the transition to a circular economy. By Sara Lewis

Eu laws driving change but
meeting targets challenging

E

uropean Union (EU) regulations
are driving change in plasticisers
and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production, as well as recycling, but
meeting targets on recycled content
is challenging, industry speakers told
participants in a June 24-25 media
field trip to the Netherlands. The
event, including a visit to Dutch
Shin-Etsu and Kras Recycling plants,
was sponsored by the PVC sector's
10-year sustainability programme VinylPlus and organised by chemical
industry group European Plasticisers.
Perry Walters, European Plasticisers technical manager said that restrictions under the EU chemicals
controls regulation REACH have
forced a switch from low molecular
weight (LMW) phthalates, such as
bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), to
high molecular weight (HMW) ones,
notably diisononyl phthalate (DINP)
as well as the non-phthalate plasticiser dioctyl terephthalate (DOTP).
"There's been quite an investment by
the industry," said Walters.
Ben Kras, CEO of Kras Recycling,
in Volendam, northeast of Amsterdam, voiced concerns about a 65%
recycling target for all materials in the
packaging and packaging waste directive, as well as the EU's push towards the circular economy, saying

that "big growth" in the collection of
plastics was expected, but the difficulty would be to find outlets for
such additional recycled materials.
"We see plastics growing and
growing and our biggest challenge is
finding uses for it," Kras said. Multinational companies, like Unilever, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble, which
are big plastic packaging users, are
reluctant to use recycled materials,
for consumer goods and food, because they "won't take the risk when
they can't guarantee there's no cadmium in it".
Kras said that "if we are asked 'is
it REACH compliant?' you don't
know," arguing that establishing a
true "circular economy will be very
hard to reach."
He also stressed that "recycling is
limited - from the different colours
we can just make black," while white
allowed recyclers to make different
colours.
Kras said there was a Dutch company running a closed loop recycling
system for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles using a deposit and
return scheme, that after a few years
had received a license to sell the
products for drinks. But generally the
quality of household plastics waste is
difficult to recycle because it is too

PVC....still keeping feet dry

july/august 2019

PVC still plays a vital role in the medical sector

mixed and contains a lot of laminates
with 30% unfit for recycling, Kras explained, comparing this to the more
useful purely industrial waste his
company collects and recycles in separate material streams, covering costs
through sales.
The VinylPlus sustainability programme, spawned by the predecessor Vinyl 2010, has a target, set in
2011, of recycling 800,000 tonnes
of PVC annually by 2020 across the
EU. "I think we will achieve that,"
said Arjen Sevenster of VinylPlus,
flagging up the 739,525 tonnes recycled in 2018. Sevenster noted that
last September VinylPlus went even
further with targets for 900,00
tonnes a year by 2025 and a million
by 2030.
Crucially, recycling PVC avoids carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, so important when every sector needs to
fight climate change. Sevenster said

➡ Continued on page 25
23
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