EU COMMISSION INITIATES ACTION AGAINST PVC - GREENPEACE CALLS FOR SUBSTITUTION

26 July 2000

BRUSSELS -- Greenpeace welcomed today's long-awaited publication of a Green Paper on polyvinyl chloride (PVC) by the European Commission as an important step towards effective action against the many environmental hazards of PVC (1). Greenpeace demanded an immediate ban on PVC waste incineration and complete substitution of PVC material (2).

"We are glad to see that the European Commission is taking the enormous environmental problems related to PVC seriously and intends to act against them", said Axel Singhofen, EU Toxics Advisor for Greenpeace International. "The evidence against PVC presented in the Green Paper is overwhelming - there can be only one consequence from it: PVC has got to go!"

The Green Paper assesses various environmental and health issues related in particular to PVC waste management (3) and presents a number of options to reduce those impacts. It also launches a public consultation process with a view to presenting a comprehensive Community Strategy on the environmental issues of PVC at the beginning of 2001.

"The Green Paper demonstrates that whatever disposal option you choose for PVC wastes, the environment will suffer", said Singhofen. "We call on the Commission to focus its future strategy on rapid and complete substitution of PVC."

The Green Paper states that, if the current trend in PVC waste management continues, the amount of PVC waste incinerated in Europe will increase more than fourfold over the next 20 years from 0.6 million tonnes to 2.5 million tonnes per year. Even if as much as possible were to be recycled, the amount of PVC waste to be burned would still only be lowered marginally.

The Commission's document reveals that incineration of PVC leads to the formation of enormous amounts of hazardous waste - in many cases more than was actually put into the incinerator. It states that all scenarios calculated showed that it is better for the environment not to incinerate PVC. It finally highlights that PVC waste incineration benefits from a hidden subsidy, as the additional costs for the special treatment required are not allocated to PVC, but spread across all wastes sent to incineration.

"Incinerating PVC is the worst possible option for its disposal, both environmentally and economically", said Axel Singhofen. "If we do not ban the incineration of PVC as soon as possible, we will be flooded by huge amounts of hazardous wastes and poisonous emissions."

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

- Axel Singhofen, Greenpeace International EU Toxics Advisor, Tel: +32 2 280 1987;
- Matilda Bradshaw, Media Officer, Greenpeace International, Tel: +31 20 524 9545.

Visit Greenpeace's Toxics campaign website:
www.greenpeace.org/~toxics

(1) Available from: europa.eu.int/comm/environment/pvc/index.htm

(2) A substitution would be fully in line with the Community waste management strategy of 1996 (COM(96)399) states that "preventive measures might lead to the need for EC-wide rules to limit the presence of heavy metals in products on in the production process or ban specific substances, in order to prevent, at later stage, the generation of hazardous waste. This might be the case where neither the reuse nor the recovery or the safe disposal of that substance is an environmentally acceptable solution".

(3) The Green Paper presents the following waste disposal problems:

Additives - The use of hazardous plasticisers and stabilisers in rather high quantities constitutes a specific characteristic of PVC compared to other types of plastics;

- All the phthalates used in large quantities in PVC products are ubiquitous in the environment today - and leaching from PVC products seems to be the major source for this widespread contamination (90% of phthalates are used to soften PVC);

- Use of cadmium in PVC contributes to 10% of the cadmium content in municipal solid waste (MSW), use of lead contributes to 1-28% of the lead content in MSW;

Incineration - PVC incineration creates significant amounts of hazardous wastes (0.8-1.4 kg/kg of PVC) in non-wet flue gas treatment - more than was actually put into incineration;

- PVC incineration increases the operating costs of the incinerators (20-335 Euro/tonne of PVC), but these additional costs are not borne by PVC;

- Diverting PVC from incineration shows environmental benefits for all scenarios;

- PVC is the largest contributor of chlorine into incinerators and the contribution of incinerators to the total of dioxin emission in the Community was about 40% between 1993 and 1995;

Landfilling - Landfilling of soft PVC results in the release of azardous plasticisers and stabilisers;

- Losses of phthalates could also contribute to gaseous emissions from landfills;

- Emissions resulting from the presence of PVC in landfills can last longer than the guarantee of the technical barrier and there is no evidence that the release of phthalates will come to a standstill after a given period of time;

- Landfilling of PVC will certainly contribute to the formation of dioxins and furans during accidental landfill fires;

Recycling - Recyling of post-consumer PVC waste is at less than 3%, and most of it is down-cycling;

- Recycling could only contribute to 18% of PVC post-consumer waste management in 2020;

- No recycling operation is currently profitable except for downcycling of PVC cables;

- Recycling of PVC waste containing heavy metals raises specific problems due to the potential dilution of heavy metals into new and possibly wider range of products;

Chemical recycling - The successful operation of dedicated chemical recycling plants is mainly dependent on the economic aspects and in present circumstances there are important question marks over the viability of such operations;