Meet the Innovators: How VIABILITY Grant Winners are Shaping the Future of Vinyl
Vinyl is known for its durability and long operational lifespan in products like siding, windows, roofing, piping, and flooring. But as environmental priorities shift toward a more circular economy, increasing recycling and material reuse has become more important.
Fortunately, the industry is making meaningful strides. According to “The State of PVC Recycling in the USA & Canada,” a study conducted by The Vinyl Institute in collaboration with Scrapp®, the North American vinyl industry recycled more than 1.1 billion pounds of PVC in 2024, surpassing 2019 results by more than 45 million pounds.
[H2] The Gap Between Post-Industrial and Post-Consumer Recycling
Post-industrial recycling is thriving, rising to over 1 billion pounds in 2024, a 10% increase from 2019. This success is driven by manufacturing plants systematically collecting excess material, which remain clean, unmixed, and easy to reprocess on site.
The real challenge lies in post-consumer recovery. Post-consumer vinyl includes products that have completed their service life, such as discarded siding, window frames, roofing membranes, and flooring. In 2024, post-consumer recycling recorded 71.3 million pounds.
Reclaiming post-consumer PVC comes with financial and operational hurdles. Unlike clean factory scrap, end-of-life post-consumer materials are scattered across demolition sites, home renovations, and municipal waste streams, often mixed with dirt, adhesives, and hardware that require specialized cleaning and sorting equipment.
Bridging the Recycling Gap: The VIABILITY Grant Solution
To address these hurdles, the Vinyl Institute launched the VIABILITY Recycling Grant Program, a dedicated grant initiative designed to accelerate recycling innovation and increase the quantity of post-consumer vinyl recycled. VIABILITY is backed by $3.4 million in funding from major PVC resin manufacturers including Formosa, OxyChem, Shintech, and Westlake, who are helping lead industry vinyl sustainability efforts.
The program awards grants ranging from $10,000 up to $250,000 per project to fund high-impact investments in research and development and capital projects that directly increase post-consumer collection, sorting, and processing capacity. Grants are accessible to a broad mix of stakeholders, including commercial recyclers, product manufacturers, construction waste aggregators, trade associations, non-profits, and research institutions.
To secure funding, applicants submit a project proposal detailing how their initiative will impact post-consumer recycling. A seven-member grant committee reviews submissions on a competitive basis, prioritizing projects that demonstrate scalable technology, clear operational timelines, a high volume of waste diverted from landfills, and matching funds.
Transforming the Vinyl Supply Chain
The VIABILITY program directly addresses the obstacles that traditionally make post-consumer recycling difficult and funds innovative research as well as equipment needed to convert PVC scrap into recycled feedstock.
The program has funded logistical solutions that move end-of-life materials off job sites and into reprocessing streams. Grants have supported dedicated collection bins, contractor training programs, reverse logistics networks, and regional consolidation hubs. The program also funds research into chemical recycling, opening new pathways for hard to recycle materials that mechanical sorting cannot process.
Real-World Impact: Grant Award Recipients
The practical impact of the VIABILITY program is visible across a diverse group of grant recipients who are putting this capital to work across North America. Here are a few examples:
Revinylize
What began as a 2022 pilot program in Northeast Ohio collecting post-consumer residential vinyl siding has grown into the Revinylize Recycling Collaborative, an initiative led by the Polymeric Exterior Products Association (PEPA).
The original pilot successfully diverted over 400,000 pounds of vinyl siding in one market in 2023. Leveraging two rounds of VIABILITY grant funding, PEPA expanded the program nationwide, developing the Revinylize brand and creating an interactive digital platform that connects consumers, builders, and recyclers with local drop-off locations.
What would have taken three to four years without grant support was accomplished in just eight months, positioning Revinylize to foster broader value-chain partnerships and to recycle 30 million pounds of vinyl siding, far in excess of its goal of 5 million pounds.
Green Eagle
Green Eagle, a vinyl profile and composite materials manufacturer based in Georgetown, South Carolina, utilized VIABILITY grant funding to assist with tooling for an innovative post-consumer PVC shipping pallet. By pairing hard-to-recycle post-consumer vinyl with post-production carbon fiber composites, Green Eagle developed an extruded pallet profile offering significant strength.
The grant funding enabled Green Eagle to acquire necessary machine tooling and secure a patent within six months. The resulting composite pallets were then rigorously tested and validated by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Designed to be reused up to 50 times, the composite pallets offer an alternative to single-use wood pallets, which account for nearly 40 percent of harvested hardwood in the U.S. If Green Eagle captures just one percent of the domestic pallet market, it could recycle 75 million pounds (37,500 tons) of post-consumer PVC every year.
Allied Industries
Allied Industries, a Jonesville, South Carolina flooring manufacturer founded in 2007, produces Eco Grip, a commercial flexible PVC flooring line made with 100 percent recycled content.
Looking to expand capacity and redirect more PVC waste from landfills, Allied Industries utilized VIABILITY grant funding to acquire and install automated line feeders for their production facility. By eliminating manual hand loading, these autoloaders increased processing efficiency by up to 50 percent, allowing the company to convert post-consumer PVC roofing membranes into durable commercial flooring at an increased rate of 100,000 pounds per week—diverting millions of additional pounds of vinyl waste from landfills annually.
Exeon
Exeon Processors, an Imperial Group Company based in Jonesboro, Indiana, specializes in material recovery for the wire and cable industry. While recovering scrap metal from electrical wiring, Exeon identified that the mixed plastic insulation surrounding the wire often ended up in landfills.
Utilizing VIABILITY grant funding paired with matching support from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), Exeon acquired an electrostatic separator to isolate clean post-consumer PVC from other plastics. Before adding the separator, Exeon recycled roughly one truckload of PVC every few months. Now, with the new equipment operational, the facility has the capacity to process 550,000 pounds per month, yielding up to 7 million pounds of high-purity recycled post-consumer PVC annually for reuse in manufacturing.
Auto Mats & Accessories (AMA)
Auto Mats & Accessories (AMA) is a Dalton, Georgia manufacturer that uses 4 to 5 million pounds of recycled post-consumer and post-industrial vinyl annually to produce durable auto mats and accessories. AMA applied for a VIABILITY grant to modernize its equipment and expand raw material sourcing.
The grant enabled AMA to acquire a third high-efficiency injection molding machine capable of processing 160 pounds of post-consumer PVC per hour. Networking through VIABILITY connected the company with three new post-consumer vinyl supply streams.
Together, this equipment upgrade and expanded supply network enable AMA to recycle up to 1 million additional pounds of PVC per year, diverting significant tonnage from landfills.
Every Shelter
Every Shelter, a Houston, Texas non-profit, designs shelter solutions for displaced communities and refugees. In the United States, Every Shelter repurposes discarded billboard vinyl into heavy-duty disaster relief tarps for temporary emergency roofing. While traditional polyethylene ‘blue’ tarps typically last around 30 days, upcycled vinyl billboard tarps offer an average service life of 24 months.
Utilizing two rounds of VIABILITY grant funding, Every Shelter established supply agreements with out-of-home advertisers and qualified manufacturing partners, and created a distribution channel through disaster response networks like Good360.
In its initial phase, Every Shelter diverted 74,250 pounds of billboard vinyl from landfills to produce 1,650 emergency tarps. They distributed 400 tarps to assist roughly 1,000 disaster survivors in Tennessee while warehousing the remainder for rapid response. Having built a supply chain capable of producing up to 22,000 tarps annually, Every Shelter is now expanding operations to divert 450,000 pounds of PVC from landfills and provide long-lasting emergency shelter for more than 12,500 disaster victims.
Lastique
Lastique, an Aurora Material Solutions Company, is a plastics recycler based in Louisville, Kentucky. Operating out of a 130,000-square-foot facility equipped with industrial grinders, pulverizers, blenders, and pelletizing lines, Lastique diverts millions of pounds of vinyl scrap from landfills annually.
Seeking to increase post-consumer content, Lastique addressed a major jobsite challenge: post-consumer vinyl siding often arrives mixed with aluminum siding.
Utilizing VIABILITY grant funding, Lastique acquired and installed an eddy current separator on a new 1.5-million-pound monthly capacity line. Following successful operational trials, the separator allows Lastique to separate metal contaminants from vinyl streams, resulting in cleaner recycled material and reduced wear on existing equipment. The technology also enables Lastique to scale up operations to recycle tens of millions of pounds of post-consumer PVC annually.
Coated Fabrics and Film Association (CFFA)
The Coated Fabrics and Film Association (CFFA) represents international manufacturers of polymer-based fabric and film products used in building, automotive, healthcare, and industrial applications. Its Vinyl Roofing Division (VRD) used four rounds of VIABILITY grant funding to expand its post-consumer PVC roof membrane recycling infrastructure, fund dedicated recycling coordinators, and improve logistics networks.
Since initiating data collection in 2014, CFFA VRD has surpassed 200 million pounds of post-consumer and pre-consumer PVC roofing membrane diverted from landfills. With VIABILITY grant support expanding its network of contractors and recyclers, CFFA projects an additional 2 million pounds of post-consumer PVC recycled annually by 2027, maintaining a 20 to 30 percent year-over-year growth rate in recovered roofing membranes.
Fenestration and Glazing Industry Alliance (FGIA)
The Fenestration and Glazing Industry Alliance (FGIA), a Schaumburg, Illinois trade association representing window and door manufacturers, utilized two rounds of VIABILITY grant funding to research and deploy a post-consumer vinyl window recycling pilot.
In its initial phase, FGIA conducted a comprehensive national study, surveying twenty window manufacturers, extruders, installers, and recyclers to map regional infrastructure. The review revealed that most replacement contractors have facility space for window collection and a 90 percent plan to expand vinyl recycling within five years.
Armed with these insights, FGIA secured a second VIABILITY grant to launch a targeted pilot recycling program across three Midwest locations, establishing standardized collection and logistics to divert end-of-life window frames from landfills back into manufacturing.
To learn more about the VIABILITY Recycling Grant Program, visit www.vinylinfo.org/recycling/.
Note: The projects highlighted above represent a selection of VIABILITY grant recipients and do not constitute an exhaustive list of all funded initiatives.