We are all striving for a more sustainable future and the PVC industry is making great strides in improving the environmental, social and economic sustainability of its products.

PVC products are both long life and durable. As a non-biodegradable, stable, inert and non-toxic material, these qualities make it a successful choice for long-life building applications, from windows and doors to flexible PVC flooring and pipes.

Research suggests that each PVC product can be recycled more than ten times and still maintain performance.

This has been proven successfully in the UK with increased recycling of rigid PVC-U windows and doors into new products, such as cladding and cable management products.

Nearly 40,000 tonnes of waste PVC was recycled in the UK during 2007, according to latest figures from Recovinyl, the European-wide industry’s recycling initiative. It is a tremendous achievement, which has diverted valuable resources from landfill with considerable environmental benefits.

The scheme encourages greater recycling of post-use plastic from items as diverse as end-of-life window and door frames to flexible flooring and pipes.

While much of this material is sourced from the PVC-U window and door industry, figures suggest that waste volumes from the flexible flooring sector could also provide significant quantities of material for recycling.

Consequently, Axion Recycling is conducting six-month trials, with funding from WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), which aim to collect and recycle substantial tonnages of post-installation off-cuts and uplifted (end-of-life) flooring.

Material is being collected from more than 20 individual flooring projects, including distributors, hospitals and retail sites around the UK. Several retail household names have signed up to the project and discussions are taking place with local authorities over school refurbishments and ‘soft-strip’ demolition companies where end-of-life flooring can be taken away for recycling.

Three flexible flooring manufacturers, Tarkett-Marley Floors, Polyflor and Altro, are taking part to demonstrate the feasibility of making a new commercially viable flooring product with recycled content. As members of the Resilient Flooring Association, a fourth company, Gerflor does not have a manufacturing base in the UK, but is helping us to collect material and put us in touch with major projects. The project is clearly important to the company and it wishes to support it.

Getting sufficient volumes for recycling is crucial, so we are also liaising with a network of installers throughout the country who will collect old flooring and off-cuts for recycling.

We have visited a number of installers working on major floor projects, whether it’s a big department store, hospital or school, to set up the best options for sustainable collection systems.

Depending on where they’re based and local collection facilities, these are either bulk bags or cages to store the off-cuts and old flooring material before it is sent for recycling. During the trial, material will be collected free of charge, including from waste transfer stations that receive uplifted PVC flooring in their waste streams.

A collection target of 30 tonnes of material, including post-installation offcuts, uplifted flooring and Altro safety flooring off-cuts, has been set for the end of February 2008.

Pete Thomas, environment and quality manager at Tarkett-Marley Floors, says its participation fits perfectly with its recycling philosophy. “We are committed to increasing both the amount of vinyl flooring which is recovered for recycling and the amount put back into new flooring products.”

Tarkett-Marley is a founder member of EPFLOOR, (the European PVC Flooring Producers), part of the Vinyl 2010 PVC European Sustainability Programme, which has committed to increase each year the quantity of the collectable available waste from PVC flooring that can be recycled.

According to Ian Wright, marketing director at Altro, this recycling scheme is an essential component of the company’s sustainability strategy, which is reducing its current and future environmental impact: “We have, for a long time, been actively investing in ways to reduce our carbon footprint through process and other improvements to deliver energy efficiency, waste reduction and, not least, recycling.

“We are committed to targeting improvements in all these areas, and to ensuring the sustainability benefits of PVC safety flooring are communicated to the building industry worldwide. As one of our ‘Six Steps to Sustainability’, recycling is a major part of this environmental focus and the Axion scheme is helping us to deliver against our objectives.”

It is quite an extraordinary trial in that effectively competing manufacturers have agreed to present a united front in taking this recycling initiative forward.

Ultimately, we hope it will result in a sustainable, nationwide collection system for waste flexible flooring that will provide a consistent stream of material for manufacturers to re-use in a commercially viable product. This can only be good for the industry in establishing its green credentials – and of course for the environment.

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