Hospitals and vinyl: an unrivalled match

21/03/2018

Every day across Europe, new hospitals and healthcare centres are being built. These significant investments often aim to create architectural projects that participate in ensuring efficient, flexible and qualitative patient treatment, in addition to optimising working conditions for staff. The architectural challenge of these new hospitals is for aesthetics and functionality to form a perfect match. The countless combination options offered by vinyl-based materials enable the architects’ free rein in their creativity, offering them almost infinite design options to meet aesthetics, functionality, safety, affordability and sustainability needs.

The idea of a “healing architecture” holds sway over many new hospital projects. This concept covers, among other things: light, colour, art, access, orientation options, noise reduction and green recreational surroundings. Studies show that these elements positively influence the success of the patient treatment and add to improving the working environment of hospital staff.

Safety and hygiene

Safety and hygiene are other crucial elements in health care environments. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control states that infections occurring in clinical environments represent a significant threat to public health. In Europe, over 4 million patients contract infections from hospital exposures. 37,000 unnecessary deaths are the result of such infection in Europe. These infections can be significantly reduced by, amongst other things, using appropriate materials across the hospital premises. The smooth and dirt-resistant properties of vinyl considerably reduce the risk of retention and multiplication of bacteria. Thanks to its great wear resistance, ease of installation, cleaning and maintenance, vinyl optimises the cost of running and maintaining heavy traffic environments, while ensuring safety and hygiene. These benefits have made vinyl flooring an integral part of operation theatres, patient rooms, clean rooms, wet rooms and laboratories everywhere.

Economic benefits

In 2011 the European Council of Vinyl Manufacturers (ECVM) commissioned an independent analysis of the overall economic aspects of using vinyl as a building material throughout the product’s lifecycle, including the costs of purchase, installation, use, maintenance, repair and replacement. The comparative economic analysis revealed that vinyl provides significant economic benefits and even more so when the entire product’s lifecycle is looked at.

Sustainable development

Last, but not least, the sustainability criteria of the chosen materials must also be considered. The PVC industry has been actively engaging in a number of initiatives to move towards a sustainable life cycle outlook from the production to the use through the end of life of vinyl. As an example, the PVC industry has set up a comprehensive environmental programme called VinylPlus® which is aiming at recycling 800,000 tonnes of PVC waste per year by 2020. The programme ensures the PVC industry constantly improves the sustainable characteristics of vinyl throughout its entire life cycle. It does so while maintaining all the properties that make it an exceptional material for hospital building and other projects that necessitate high requirements with regard to wear resistance, comfort, design options, safety, hygiene, ease of installation, cleaning and maintenance, and total cost.

Over the last decade, the PVC industry has constantly been innovating to help ensure the availability of the best cost-efficient flooring, ceiling and wall covering solutions for patients and staff in health care environments while pursuing strong sustainability objectives.

Saving money at the Västra Nylands Hospital (Finland)

A lifecycle cost analysis at the Västra Nylands Hospital, which is equipped with a high-quality vinyl, found that the Finnish hospital was saving €65,000 a year on cleaning. Total savings add up to €1.6 million on cleaning alone on a 24-year lifecycle basis. Over the same period, the hospital will save 58,320 litres of water, 17,136 litres of chemicals and 16,944 kWh of electricity.

First time ever: Recycling and reuse of the 2012 Olympic medical centre (London)

When the Olympic Games were organised in 2012 in London, the ‘Commission for a Sustainable London 2012’ drew up a policy on the use of vinyl in the comprehensive Olympic building projects which specified a series of sustainability requirements. During the construction of the Olympics, the organisers realized that vinyl possessed a number of unique properties that were necessary for many of the applications needed for the Games. The result was that over 90,000 m2 of recyclable vinyl was used in flooring and seating in the blood test centre and the medical centre as well as in the water polo arena, the velodrome, the basketball arena and dining halls. A great part of the vinyl flooring has since been recycled and reused in British schools and social building projects. This is the first time that flooring has been recycled to such a big extent which shows the potential there is for such large scale projects.