Recycling of PVC packaging into extruded cellular products

Abstract

New packaging recovery legislation will be introduced in the UK later this year, obliging producers to recover and recycle a certain percentage of packaging waste. EVC has carried out development work to find applications for recycled post-consumer PVC bottles and PVC supermarket trays. One successful application is to use the recycled PVC packaging as the foamed core in co-extruded cellular profiles. Production-scale trials have been carried out to extrude cladding containing pulverised post-consumer PVC bottles and pulverised PVC tray material. The products had satisfactory density, foam structure, colour and surface finish. Using up to 100% bottle recylate did not affect the impact properties of the foam profile. Recycled supermarket trays actually gave an improvement in impact properties: this is attributable to the high levels of impact modifier used in tray formulations. These trials have demonstrated that PVC packaging can be recycled into foamed extrusions for use in the building industry.