The 8 common myths of PVC

With all the talk of sustainability filling the airwaves and the newspapers, it’s maybe time to address some of the myths that surround PVC as a material. I reckon that there are 8 common ones. There may be more but these are the ones I see.

Myth 1. “PVC is not a sustainable proposition as long as it is made with chlorine” – a statement made by Greenpeace.

57% of the molecular weight of PVC is chlorine derived from common salt (it also makes your chips taste better, too). And salt can’t be too bad for the planet, after all there are 50 quadrillion tonnes of dissolved salt in the world’s seas. When I read that I had to look up just how big a quadrillion is. It’s 1 followed by 15 0s if you are in America or 1 followed by 24 0s here in the UK. I don’t know which version was used, but let’s just accept that there is an awful lot of the stuff there. One claim suggests that there is enough to put a layer around the whole planet to a depth of 45m. Currently a third of salt production comes from seawater. The rest comes from the 200 Billion tonnes of salt deposits underground. So not much danger of running out any time soon.

The remainder of the molecular weight is from hydrocarbons, mainly gas or oil but ethylene (necessary to make PVC) from biomass is also used, albeit not to a great extent as yet. It is frequently claimed that it takes 8 tonnes of oil to produce 1 tonne of PVC. This is frequently claimed without pointing out the fact that the other 7.5 tonnes is not thrown away. Many useful products are produced when oil is refined and little or nothing is thrown away.

Myth 2. Organochlorines are alien to nature.

An organochlorine is basically an organic compound with chlorine in it. Organochlorines are part of a group called organohalogens (stay awake, now). Natural organohalogens are being discovered at the rate of 100-200 every year and out of the more than 4000 known, 2400 are organochlorines. Hardly alien to nature, then. Vinyl chloride (the VC part of PVC) is found naturally, so it can no longer be claimed that vinyl chloride is solely man-made.

Myth 3. PVC production operations are “Dioxin factories” – yet another one by Greenpeace.

According to a study for DEFRA in 2003, about 5000 tonnes of fireworks are let off every year in the UK. To emit the same amount of dioxins would take the total current production of PVC 30,000 years. And that’s just using current technology. Add to the fireworks the dioxins emitted from wherever organic materials are burnt (bonfires and waste incinerators for example) and the amount contributed by PVC production is insignificant. The highest permitted dioxin concentration allowed from industrial discharges is 0.1ng/m3. Now that might not mean much to you (or to me frankly) but a study in France in 2003 measured dioxin levels of 0.7ng/m3 in the vicinity of a standard BBQ cooking meat. That statistic has put me off my burnt offerings completely.

Myth 4. Substituting PVC products provides cost and environmental benefits.

We know that PVC-U windows are almost always lower cost than windows from other materials. How else would we be selling so many? The timber boys are claiming increases in sales but they still account for only a tiny part of the market. As to environmental factors, try this quote from Michael Meacher, MP, after a study for DEFRA by environmental consultancy organisation, Entec. “The life cycle costs of PVC products would appear to involve significantly lower costs than equivalent product made out of alternative materials”. Or the outcome of a report commission by the EU which summed up that there was no reason to treat PVC-U windows differently to other materials from an environmental standpoint. And my favourite, from Dr Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, in 2006 “There is absolutely no evidence that vinyl [i.e. PVC] damages human health or the environment. PVC is durable, low maintenance, recyclable and performs well in LCA [Life Cycle Analysis] tests “. You can even watch him on the subject of PVC on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6M-ci4FQss

Myth 5. PVC production is energy intensive.

In fact, out of all the common plastics being used today, PVC uses the least energy of all. Energy consumption is obviously used in Life Cycle Analyses so any excessive use would show up there. In fact the energy required to manufacture PVC is going down as technology continues to improve. With the current market value of emitted carbon dioxide it would cost less than 0.5% of the price of finished products to make them carbon neutral by investing in carbon offset.

Myth 6. PVC is particularly dangerous in accidental fires.

All organic materials, whether natural such as wood, or synthetic such as PVC can burn and all fires will release toxic fumes. But PVC is very difficult ignite and if you take the source of the flame away it self-extinguishes. PVC will not spread flame on its own – it has one of the lowest flame spread ratings of all materials. Very few materials have a lower rate of heat release than PVC. PVC is in the mid range of organic materials when it comes to smoke obscuration and toxicity. So, if PVC helps prevent a fire starting and, if it does start, prevents it spreading, then that only be a good thing.

Myth 7. PVC contains harmful additives

PVC on its own is pretty useless. It needs additives to give it stability, impact resistance, to enable extrusion as well as pigments for colour. These additives are added at the compounding stage and normal factory regulations cover their use. If they were dangerous we wouldn’t be allowed to use them. As part of the Voluntary Commitment, which the observant of you will remember me writing about before, the use of lead salt stabilisers are being phased out and they are being replaced by calcium organics. This even though nobody has been able to show any risk from the use of lead salts. But has that nasty four-letter word “lead” in it. The additives are bound up in the matrix of the material. They cannot leach out so even if it ends up in landfill, the least desirable option because it is getting rid of a valuable material, it will actually help stabilise the ground and won’t emit any gases.

Myth 8. PVC is not recyclable.

I am amazed that people still have this misperception. PVC has been around for decades and is probably the most researched plastic. It is easily recyclable, and once it has been recycled once, it can be recycled again. And again … There is a highly competitive business out there buying fabricator off-cuts. Any fabricator slinging off-cuts into the skip needs smacking on the head with a brick. I had thought this would have not been possible in these days, but the BPF took a call recently from a fabricator wanting to know what he could with his off-cuts. Don’t they read trade magazines? We currently recycle around 40,000 tonnes of off-cuts back into window profile. I’ve written here about the work of Recovinyl, the voluntary industry based initiative to recycle post-use PVC – mis-measures, damaged beyond repair, end of life, etc. The number of companies involved in the collection, sorting and recycling businesses continues to increase, as does the volume of material they recycle. The amounts recycled are audited independently and openly. You read tales of ships containing so-called recycled material being shipped to some African country for landfilling. That is not the case here. All the material collected by Recovinyl (which is a European scheme) stays in Europe. Most UK recycled material goes back to UK converters and almost all to long life, high grade applications such as windows, pipes, conduits, cavity closers and the like.

The beauty of these myths is that many of them contain a grain of truth. No material is perfect and like any other material PVC must face up to its environmental challenges, for instance by lowering the amount of energy needed to produce and extrude PVC, increasing the amount of old material being diverted from going to landfill and continuing to improve manufacturing techniques and safety performance.

Fair and balance environmental assessments show PVC windows in a favourable light and it’s time we stopped knocking materials and started competing on what really matters to the customer, product, service and price.

If you interested in finding out more about PVC and the Voluntary Commitment go to www.pauljervis.net/filemgmt/viewcat.php?cid=7 where you will a dozen useful documents that can be downloaded free of charge.