NCRA's PVC Bottle Phase-out Campaign Has Gone National! 

Check out this comprehensive report called "PVC- Bad New Comes in 3s:  The Poison Plastic, Health Hazards and the Looming Waste Crisis" at www.besafenet.com
Find links to write letters to Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson to encourage them to find alternatives to the PVC packaging they use.
Here's a direct link to the report released in December 2004. 
http://www.besafenet.com/PVCDisposalReport_2-Column_R6.pdf

PVC Bottles Create Problems for Recycling
Especially for PET Recycling
SPI code # 3 (V)—PVC, Polyvinyl Chloride

The Problem:

PVC creates very significant contamination problems for PET bottle recycling. Because both PET and PVC sink in water, they cannot be separated in traditional plastic recycling wash systems without expensive detection equipment. There is no equipment available that will remove 100% of PVC from PET bottles. PVC has a much lower melt temperature than PET. At PET’s melt temperature, PVC burns destroying the surrounding PET and harming the processing equipment.
Even very small amounts (100 parts per million) of PVC in PET will reduce its value or make it unusable. PVC bottles and labels threaten the well-developed PET bottle recycling infrastructure and the continued development of bottle to bottle PET recycling.

PVC bottles can easily be mistaken for PET, as both are used for clear bottles. Some product brands use both PET and PVC in similar (or the same) packaging. There is no technical need to package products in PVC bottles. PVC is usually chosen because of its low cost.

Even when PVC Bottles are separated from the post-consumer bottle stream, moving them is a challenge due to their low value. They are costly to separate because PVC bottles make up only 2% of the bottles manufactured in the United States which makes accumulating enough material to create a truckload quantity very difficult. Yet that same 2% of the bottle stream creates major problems for PET recyclers.

Read NCRA's PVC Resolution

The Solution:

• Avoid purchasing products packaged in bottles made out of PVC.
• Write, email, or call product manufacturers and request that they switch to a more environmentally friendly package. If you find that a company on our list has made the switch to a more environmentally preferable package, please thank them and let us know so that we can remove them from our list. We try to update our list often, but it may be in need of additional updates (both in terms of additions or removals).
• Download Word or PDF file of product manufacturers
• Download Word or PDF file of letter template
• Inform others about the problems with PVC bottles.

Press Release
June 16, 2004
Download this Press Release in Word or PDF.

Chasing Arrows Don’t Always Mean Recyclable—Especially When It Comes to PVC Bottles

Madison, WI—A new report issued today by the GrassRoots Recycling Network provides evidence that bottles made from polyvinyl chloride, commonly known as “vinyl,” or PVC, pose significant harm to community recycling programs.

GRRN’s report, “Message in a Bottle: The Impacts of PVC on Plastics Recycling,” examines the extent to which PVC used in bottles and containers is recycled. While PVC makes up only a small fraction of the container market, its small presence has a dramatic impact on the recycling of other plastic containers – widely regarded as the most well developed plastics recycling market.

PVC bottles, used for packaging many popular cooking oils, shampoos, lotions, and pet products are often confused by consumers as polyethylene terephthalate, or PET (the plastic labeled with the #1 symbol and commonly used for water and soda bottles), because of the visual similarity of the two materials. Even highly sensitive mechanical sorting equipment used by recycling companies has difficulty distinguishing the two types of plastics. This confusion results in the contamination of PET during the recycling process and destroys the more valuable PET material.

“Though PVC and PET share visual similarities, their physical and chemical properties make them fundamentally incompatible,” says David Wood, GRRN’s Executive Director. “Of specific concern is that during the melting process of plastics recycling, PVC burns at the temperature needed to simply melt PET. This ruins the PET batch, the
processing equipment, and undermines successful PET recycling efforts,” continues Wood.

GRRN’s report is significant because the concerns over PVC use among recycling professionals is not well known and because the vinyl industry has held our claims of recyclability as a response to the human health and environmental impacts of PVC. Chief among the concerns of environmental health activists are:

1. PVC production exposes workers and local communities to high levels of vinyl chloride and other potent carcinogens,

2. PVC products such as medical equipment and children’s toys leach toxic additives during their useful life,

3. When vinyl building materials catch fire, they release acutely toxic acid gases,

4. PVC products release toxic substance into the environment when they are burned in incinerators or rural trash barrels, or buried in landfills, and

5. Dioxin, a potent human carcinogen that threatens everyone’s health at extraordinarily low concentrations, is released when PVC is burned, either intentionally or accidentally, and when PVC is manufactured.

The vinyl industry attempted to blunt criticism of their product and legislative attempts to regulate its use during the early1990s by initiating several heavily subsidized PVC bottle recycling programs. Despite their considerable expense, the programs failed and resulted
in nearly 98% of all PVC containers going to landfills and incinerators. PVC’s share of the bottle market is too small to cost effectively sustain a recycling program. PVC’s already small market share for bottles has decreased by 50% over the last ten years.

“The only comprehensive solution is to eliminate PVC containers from the marketplace,” continues GRRN’s Toral Jha. “PVC’s lingering presences in the bottle market jeopardizes successful PET recycling. Safer, economical alternative exist to using PVC and a number of companies have already switched away from dangerous PVC. We are
calling upon consumers and businesses to press PVC out of the market, and on our colleagues in the recycling industry to protect their investments from the PVC menace.”

For more information on how to take action in phasing out PVC containers, please visit www.grrn.org/pvc or the Northern California Recycling Association’s web site at www.ncrarecycles.org

Both organizations are asking consumers to do the following:

1. Write to product manufacturers and urge them to bottle in a more recyclable material

2. Refuse to purchase products packaged in PVC

3. Inform others of the problems associated with PVC bottles

The full text of the report, “Message in a Bottle: The Impacts of PVC on Plastics Recycling,” is available for download from www.grrn.org/pvc

For more information, Contact:
Toral Jha, GRRN
608-255-4800

Heidi Melander, NCRA
(510) 217-2433
ncra @ ncrarecycles.org