2024 Resolution: Continuing our Work with Vinyl Recycling

With the New Year comes the opportunity for new resolutions and the optimism to achieve new goals. Advancing vinyl recycling, while not a new goal, continues to be an important focus of the Vinyl Sustainability Council (VSC).

The industry has already committed time and money to innovating in this area. A year ago, we announced the VIABILITY grant program – a first-of-its-kind recycling grant program funded by the four main vinyl resin manufacturers (OxyChem, Westlake, Shintech, Formosa), to the tune of $3 million over 3 years. The goal of the program is simple – to fund research, technology and investment in equipment that have the capacity to increase the amount of post-consumer vinyl material that gets recycled annually. The VSC set a goal to increase recycled post-consumer vinyl by 10% by 2025 over 2019 levels.

The objective of the VIABILITY program is to keep vinyl in use and out of the land fill and while that often means recycling, it can also mean reuse.

A great example of this is Every Shelter. This non-profit organization is dedicated to creating shelter solutions for displaced refugees all over the world. The team uses out-of-commission vinyl billboards and repurposes them into temporary roofing. Recently, with the help of a VIABILITY grant, Every Shelter pilot tested the construction and use of temporary tarps for disaster relief here in the United States.

From 9/30/23 to 12/21/23, Every Shelter turned 1,650 vinyl billboards into the same amount of emergency tarps – which amounted to a total of 74,250 pounds of diverted waste. Thanks to this market for post-consumer PVC waste, thousands of pounds of PVC will be used for a great purpose.

Every Shelter is far from the only organization that we’ve funded that’s had a big difference in the world of vinyl recycling. In the first year alone, our team awarded 16 proposals with $1.67 million in grant funding. We have given funding to academic institutions researching new and innovative ways to recycle mixed waste streams, we have awarded other trade associations to help grow their pilot recycling programs, we have helped fund a medical recycling pilot and we have funded other companies that intend to use recycled PVC for products like car mats and shipping pallets. The list from just our first year spans many different types of entities and covers the full spectrum of projects related to vinyl recycling.

The best part? Now that the money is being put to work, we will begin to realize the benefits of the work through increased recycling rates. Throughout 2024, we’ll be checking in with some of the organizations that have been awarded grant funding and are excited to relay the great progress they’ve experienced.

Funding for the VIABILITY program will continue through 2024 and 2025. The next deadline for proposal submission is February 9.

Thanks to industry leaders, OxyChem, Shintech, Westlake, and Formosa progress toward increasing vinyl recycling and the circularity of the industry Is a goal within reach.