Vinyls Group

The BPF Vinyl’s Group represents the UK PVC industry to Government, customers and media.

PVC faces specific issues in the market place and so representatives from forward-thinking PVC producers, converters, additives suppliers and recyclers work together within this Group on a focussed programme of activity.

To find out more about PVC as a material, please click here

Benefits of Membership

Consumption of PVC and Vinyl products is approximately 33.6m tonnes world wide, with a wide variety of applications; from packaging to construction, flooring and medical products such as life saving blood-bags. Rigid products i.e. window profiles and pipes, make up more than half of the market in Western Europe.

Source: CMAI

The Group's activities are managed by the Vinyl’s Group Steering Committee chaired by Roger Mottram of INEOS ChlorVinyls.

The Vinyls Group work to promote the positive contribution PVC can make to everday life through communications programmes including public relations campaigns and through the production of promotional resources.

De-selection of PVC in the market place can still occasionally be seen and is usually as a consequence of innacurate and misleading information relating to the environmental performance of PVC still being proliferated online. The Vinyls Group has an ongoing programme of work to ensure any innacuracies printed or published relating to claims against PVC are answered and/ or corrected..

The implementation in the UK of the various pledges for PVC production, additives and waste management,embraced in the VinylPlus Voluntary Commitment to the European Commission, is also co-ordinated through the Vinyls Group Steering Committee.

PVC Issues

Day-to-day management of the PVC issues are managed by the BPF team and vital intelligence on the current state of regulation, political discussions including those in the UK Government and the European Commission, and swift responses to misinformation in the public domain, are all distributed to Vinyls Group sponsor companies.

In the past PVC has been the subject of some controversy, often fuelled by concerns from environmental NGOs and Green groups. This has made PVC and the Industry the focus of some attention in the public arena. The PVC Industry has been pro-active in its approach to 'Sustainable Development' and has responded to these issues.

Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), is a major plastics material which finds widespread use in transport, packaging, electrical, healthcare and coated fabrics applications, such as wall paper. Countless applications which help to improve the quality of people's lives worldwide rely on PVC to offer a sustainable and cost-effective solution.

Indeed, the number of socio-economic benefits of PVC products are colossal, ranging from packaging to floorcoverings and toys to window profiles. PVC is extensively used in water distribution and sewage management systems across the globe, a vital contribution to hygiene and civil society achieved at a sustainable cost. PVC products are also saving lives, in blood bags and surgical tubing, vital parts of modern everyday healthcare, and applications which thrive on PVC's unique technical properties.

PVC is typical in the kinds of world-enhancing solutions that all plastics are providing people with everyday. Whether it's a 100% recyclable resource-efficient sandwich-box lowering the burden of packaging waste, or whether it's non-kink surgical tubing saving someone's life, everywhere, everyday, PVC is meeting human needs.

Despite over 50 years of PVC solutions transforming civilised society and boosting developing countries, the material has been the subject of unfair criticism on the basis of an allegation that its environmental impact is problematic and that its characteristics represent a health and safety problem.

The campaign against PVC is embedded in an equally unjustified campaign against the commercial production of chlorine. As almost a third of all global chlorine production goes into the manufacture of PVC, the industry has become an obvious target for those seeking the sunsetting of industrial chlorine production. Chlorine, let us not forget, is an important materal in its own right - not only does it contribute to the production of PVC, but is used to produce a variety of other products. Did you know that 85% of medicines, including life saving drugs, are made using chlorine

PVC, the environment and Industry Voluntary Commitments

The Vinyl 2010 Voluntary Commitment to Sustainable Development was signed on the 7th March 2000, bringing together the European PVC industry supply chain to speak with one, united voice, whilst also developing key relations with descision makers within Government. Over ten years the European PVC Industry made exceptional progress in waste management, recycling and the responsible use of additives.

Following the conclusion of the Vinyl2010 ten-year programme, new targets for sustainable development were launched as part of the successor VinylPlus programme. For more information, please visit www.vinylplus.eu.

Recycling is a key theme for both the European and UK PVC industry. Under Vinyl 2010, and now VinylPlus the Recovinyl scheme was set-up to facilitate the increased need for recycling of post-consumer PVC recycling, across Europe. The UK has been one of the lead recyclers of the scheme since its inception and recycled a record 49,343 tonnes of PVC in 2010. This however excludes regulated waste streams.

The European PVC industry continues to work hard on Sustainable Development and is also recognised as a partner of the UN Partnership for Sustainable Development.

European associations and signatories of the VinylPlus Voluntary Commitment:

European Council of Vinyl Manufacturers (ECVM)
European Plastics Converters (EuPC)
European Stabilisers Producers Association (ESPA)
European Council for Plasticisers and Intermediates (ECPI)

Group Members

Altro Floors	Baerlocher UK	Berwin Group	BIPEA
Chemson	Dugdale Plc	Exxon Mobil Chemical	Hepworth Building Products
Ineos ChlorVinyls	Marley Plumbing and Drainage	Polyflor	Polypipe
Renolit Cramlington	DOW Rohm & Haas	Solvay Polymers	Tarkett
UKRFA	Vinnolit	Wavin	BPF Windows Group
Plastics Pipes Group

Contact Information

Vinyls Group Chairman: Roger Mottram, INEOS ChlorVinyls

Vinyls Group Executive: Sarah Plant, BPF

Tel: +44(0) 20 7457 5013 | Fax: +44(0) 20 7457 5045 | Email: splant@bpf.co.uk