The total amount of PVC waste recycled last year rose to 813,266 t from 810,775 t in 2021, with window profiles and related profiles comprising half of it, according to Progress Report 2023 published by VinylPlus (Brussels; www.vinylplus.eu). VinylPlus, the European PVC industry’s sustainable development programme, works to improve recycling of vinyl products such as window frames, pipes, flooring, and cables.

Some 62.42% of the 813,266 t recycled in 2022 were from pre-consumer waste and 37.58% post-consumer waste. The biggest volume recycled, at 408,151 t, were window profiles and related profiles, an expansion from the 355,329 t in 2021, which accounted for 43.82% in 2021. The next biggest group is flexible PVC and films, at 212,763 t, which dipped from 262,543 t in 2021.

Pipes & fittings from post-consumer waste were at 10,955 t versus 10,254 t in 2021. Those sourced from pre-consumer waste also climbed, to 38,709 t from 34,043 t. The other products recycled were cables at 101,239 t, flooring at 3,515 t, other rigid products at 17,114 t and rigid PVC films at 20,820 t.

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The PVC waste recycled in 2022 represented around 27% of the total PVC waste generated that year in the EU-27, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK. VinylPlus says it aims to recycle at least 900,000 t/y of PVC waste into new products by 2025 and 1 mn t by 2030.

The report said demand for rPVC remained very high until the third quarter of 2022, in a very competitive market. It noted that despite government incentives supporting the building and construction sector, market demand contracted slightly in the last quarter, partly due to extremely high energy costs.

It said there was also a growing number of PVC converters adopting the data collection system RecoTrace (Brussels; www.recotrace.com). The registered uptake of rPVC from converters reached 561,795 t in 2022, a 24.8% increase compared to the previous year.