Vinyl Institute announces more than $460K in awards to recyclers

The Vinyl Institute (VI), a Washington-based trade association representing the leading manufacturers of vinyl, has announced its first round of funding to six organizations totaling more than $460,000 through its Viability recycling grant program.

Recipients of the first round of Viability grants include the Chemical Fabrics and Film Association, Cleveland; Every Shelter, Houston; Kelly Green Board LLC, Waterbury, Connecticut; Norwich Plastics, Cambridge, Ontario, and Rochester Regional Health Systems, Rochester, New York; Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon; and the Vinyl Siding Institute, Alexandria, Virginia.

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"The U.S. PVC resin manufacturers are committed to increasing the volume of postconsumer recycled PVC," Vinyl Institute President and CEO Ned Monroe says. "The initial six Viability grantees span a variety of applications and approaches to postconsumer PVC recycling. We are growing PVC recycling capability and capacity to help our industry reach its goal of 160 million pounds of postconsumer recycled PVC annually by 2025."

The association says grants through the Viability program for PVC recycling projects support the purchase of equipment, advanced recycling research and development, educational programs and program management for long-lasting and sustainable recycling of PVC products.

The VI says the six individual grant recipients’ initiatives reach across the spectrum of the vinyl industry and represent innovation and progress. For example, Members of the Chemical Fabrics and Film Association (CFFA) have led the way in recycling for single-ply roofing, according to the VI. In 2022, the combined volume of recycling vinyl materials included 19.2 million pounds of preconsumer PVC roof membrane and 1 million pounds of postconsumer PVC roof membrane. With this foundation of experience, CFFA proposes to formalize and expand roof recycling to an industrywide program. CFFA says it will use the Viability grant to build the program, improve logistics, expand its recycling network, educate value chain members and develop end markets for recycled PVC material.

Every Shelter is a nonprofit organization that repurposes vinyl billboards to provide shelter for refugees in displacement camps in the Middle East and East Africa. Every Shelter also will repurpose vinyl billboards in the U.S. to stabilize the homes of disaster victims. The tarps FEMA currently provides last approximately 30 days, while Every Shelter says its upcycled vinyl billboard tarps have an average service life of 24 months. Every Shelter says it will use its Viability grant to develop a proof of concept for a business model including the manufacture, storage and distribution costs or an initial quantity of billboard material.

Kelly Green Board, a manufacturer of building products made from 100-percent-recycled beverage cartons, cups and other components, is developing a circular use of PVC roofing membrane by creating a roof board product that contains 50 percent postconsumer roofing membrane and 50 percent postconsumer carton packaging material that can be reused in a new roofing system. The company says the resulting recycled PVC roof board has greater water resistance when compared to other roof cover board products. It plans to use the Viability grant to further product development and manufacturing and conduct independent third-party laboratory testing.

Norwich Plastics and Rochester Regional Health Systems are developing the MediVinyl+ Clean PVC Medical Reclaim and Recycling pilot program to prove the viability of a medical recycling program in the U.S. The organizations say they intend to use the Viability grant to develop the program logistics and training materials, conduct hospital personnel training, install material handling equipment at one of the Rochester Regional Health System locations and recycle the collected materials.

Oregon State University's School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering is researching the production of high-quality waxes from PVC by hydrothermal treatment and hydrogenation. The school says the successful implementation of this program has the potential to address the entirety of single-use PVC scrap and to open up the adhesive market for PVC upcycling. OSU will use its grant funding to continue its research and development.

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The Vinyl Siding Coalition, led by the Vinyl Siding Institute, established a pilot program in Northeast Ohio that has recycled 125,000 pounds of postconsumer residential vinyl siding. The coalition says it will use the grant funding to build operating infrastructure to enable the program to grow. This includes developing a governance structure, establishing a brand, creating an operational tracking system and website and initiating activities to expand into two new markets in 2024. The VSI says its overall goal is to recycle 5 million pounds of postconsumer rigid vinyl annually by 2026.

Applications for the next round of funding consideration through Viability are due July 17.