Closed loop recycling

The PVC industry has invested millions of pounds to develop a sophisticated recycling service, bringing thousands of tonnes of ‘waste’ material back into use in a new generation of advanced energy efficient and
sustainable products.

Importantly, this includes a capacity to recycle not just production off-cuts but also old PVC products, for example doors and windows that have reached the natural end of their life cycle – closing the loop on the recycling process.

Old windows are far more complex to recycle than factory off-cuts because they inevitably contain building debris, for example steel, concrete and sealants which need to be removed before re-processing.

Windows, doors and other building products are first broken down, then powerful magnets remove and separate out ferrous metals, other less magnetic materials for example stainless steel and non-ferrous materials, for example aluminium.  Once separated these metallic materials are shipped for recycling by other specialist recyclers.

A more refined cleaning process using electrical charges then remove any remaining debris, for example tiny fragments of metal or rubber. This is followed by colour sorting using advanced systems that can be calibrated to pick out even the slightest variation between individual fragments. 

The material by this stage has achieved a near ‘virgin’ quality and can be compounded into pellets or pulverised material ready for use in a new generation of advanced products.

Research suggests that PVC can go through this process up to 10 times without losing performance while independent studies suggest PVC products have on average a reference service life of 35 years or more. This means each product could have a total life span of 350 years or more.