Hospitals consume a large number of IV fluid bags made from PVC as well as large quantities of tubing and oxygen masks. Pilot projects on PVC recovery in +300 hospitals around the world demonstrate that these kinds of PVC medical products can be separated relatively easily by hospital staff after use and recovered for recycling into new products. The projects ensure that good planning, ongoing education and liaison with the hospital’s waste management team and contractors are put in place to help them efficiently sort, store the waste and handle the logistics of safely moving waste.
PVC as a resource is too valuable to discard. The VinylPlus® programme turned the commitment of the PVC industry into action. The programme helped establish a long-term sustainability framework for the entire PVC value chain, ensuring that PVC products are properly sorted, and where possible recycled into a new secondary PVC product. Recently, VinylPlus launched the VinylPlus® Med partnership for recycling of PVC medical devices. The project demonstrates it's possible to turn short lived devices into durable hospital wall covering.
Working towards a sustainable future is a priority for the PVC industry. This has again been demonstrated by the Circular Economy Package, recently published by the European Commission with the purpose of stimulating the EU’s transition towards becoming a more circular economy. Innovative ideas and technological advancements over recent years have allowed significant progress to be made in the collection, recycling and recovering of PVC-based products. Targeted PVC waste management has ensured that this valuable raw material is not immediately discarded, but rather reprocessed into a second-life product where possible.
