Materials suitable for recycling｜RECYCLING｜Vinyl Environmental Council (VEC)

Materials suitable for recycling

PVC resin (PVC) has properties that make it suitable for recycling.

 PVC is a material that has many characteristics that make it suitable for material recycling, such as the following.

  • Deterioration does not easily occur during the period of use or during the recycling process, making it easy to recycle.
  • Because it easily mixes with various substances including inorganic substances, it is less susceptible to foreign substamces contamination during recycling.
  • Various physical properties can be expressed depending on the compounding agent, and it is used for a wide range of applications. This makes recycled materials more versatile and easier to recycle.
  • By adding compounding agents as necessary during recycling, it is easy to adjust the properties to be suitable for uses different from the original use, so a wide range of recycling is possible.
  • If PVC used for different purposes has the same degree of polymerization, it is possible to mix and recycle them.

A brief summary of the above is as follows.

<Factors for the high recyclability of PVC>

  • Less likely to deteriorate after use
  • Less affected by foreign substances contamination
  • Has a wide variety of recycling applications
  • Can be used in combination with various PVC resins

Material recycling of used PVC products has been tackled for the longest time among plastics. For this reason, material recycling of PVC is the most advanced among all general-purpose plastics. Efforts are still being made to further expand the recycling of PVC.

Material recycling of PVC has been carried out mainly for agricultural vinyl greenhouses, pipes and fittings, and electric wire covering materials, but recently, new methods are being used to recycle wallpaper and flooring materials used in building materials.

Recycling of PVC pipes and fittings

Recycling of agricultural vinyl films