Kestrel is committed to minimising the impact we have on the environment.
What is Vinyl 2010?
Vinyl 2010 is a pan European code voluntarily agreed by the PVC industry to minimise any risk to the environment and human health over a ten year programme. It is known as the PVC industry's sustainable development programme. It includes a plan to research the safest and most sustainable stabilisers, incorporating other measures to enhance and improve the environmental approach when manufacturing and using plastic products. As cadmium was phased out in 2001 in the EU, lead stabilisers are to be reduced by 50% by 2010 and totally eliminated by 2015.
In addition to monitoring the phase out of lead stabilisers the VINYL 2010 programme has developed and is monitoring the recycling of PVC-U waste streams. It is committed to reducing the environmental impact of PVC as well as supporting the life-cycle approach. The initiative has been running for four years and over time has started to develop a closed loop effect of recycling and now practices a cradle to grave analysis of the environmental impact of the material.
The recycling scheme comes under the name Recovinyl.
The Recovinyl programme has number of recycling companies in the UK that collect waste PVC-U products and recycle them as PVC Jazz pulver. Paid by a subsidy by Recovinyl to recycle the waste, they then sell the recycled material on to be used in higher grade applications such as conduits and cavity closers. To date the UK is leading the field in terms of PVC collected at 16,836 tonnes.
Useful links:
www.ecb.jrc.it (The European Chemicals Bureau)