27 July, 2000 Brussels The…

 27 July, 2000
 Brussels


                                   The deliberate smokescreen
                                                    alias
                    The voluntary commitment of the PVC industry
Introduction
A voluntary commitment is the industry's standard means of last resort to stop the regulator from
proposing legislation when all lobbying has failed. It seems to offer an attractive way out for the
regulator: why should he act if industry is acting on its own?
However, voluntary commitments rarely contain more than `no-regrets' measures - measures that are in
the industry's economic interest anyway. In most cases, the industry defines the objectives, hereby
steering the agenda according to their priorities, and not according to what action is really needed to
protect the environment and human health. The objectives do not normally cover the key problems but
try to distract from them by offering action on side/marginal?/peripheral? aspects. The public is
excluded from the process and there are no possibilities to enforce the industry's promises. And all too
often, the little that is offered is not even fulfilled.
Voluntary commitments are perfect for the industry: they promise little and in return the regulator does
nothing. If the commitment is accepted, legislative action is postponed, at least for some years, maybe
forever, and industry can continue with business as usual. And if industry fails to fulfil even the little it
committed to, it won't face any consequences apart from getting the legislation that was proposed
earlier.
The Danish example
In October 1988, the Danish Minister of the Environment presented an Action Plan on PVC. However,
the Danish industry reacted quickly and in 1991 managed to turn the Action Plan on the reduction of
PVC into an `Agreement regarding the use of PVC'.
The objective of the PVC Agreement has been inter alia to keep PVC away from incineration plants by
reducing the use of PVC in packaging and other products, and by increasing the recycling of building
products. According to the PVC Agreement, enterprises must be responsible for, and finance, the
establishment and operation of organisation(s), which set up recycling schemes for building and
construction products containing PVC.
Almost ten years later, in June 1999, the Ministry for Environment and Energy reported the following:

   "Enterprises have not lived up to the Agreement in financing collection schemes for all building products
   covered by the PVC Agreement. Consumption of building products and other products, except for
   packaging, is increasing. ...The total amount of PVC waste is expected to increase in coming years."
   "A voluntary scheme, financed by industry, which covers all building and construction products, has not
   been established. This is clearly unsatisfactory, and on this basis the EPA consider it now necessary to
   establish regulation of waste with a view to keeping PVC away from incineration plants."
   "Overall, the result of the PVC Agreement initiative is not satisfactory and there is a need for
   supplementary measures. These will include regulation of the waste area as described in WASTE 21, and
   also other limitations so that the amount of PVC does not increase. In this way the bases for the PVC
   Agreement of 3 April 1991 have changed, and they will be formally replaced by the strategy in this
   Report."
With the PVC Agreement, the Danish PVC industry succeeded in postponing legislation for more than
a decade. During that time, they have continued to expand happily. Thus the environment has not been
protected. The Danish Government is now back at square one, while the environmental problem is
even bigger than before.
Voluntary commitment of the European PVC industry
Has the European PVC industry learnt from the Danish example? Yes - they commit to hardly anything.
This lowers the risk of being caught later on for not living up to their commitments.
Recycling in        The industry is making no commitments on total recycling amounts, but only presents
general             expectations. According to their expectations, the total amount of PVC recycling would
                    reach up to 200,000 tonnes in 2010. This represents an increase from 3% of the total PVC
                    post-consumer waste currently to around 4% in 2010 (total post-consumer waste projected
                    for 2010: 4.7 million tonnes). 96% of the PVC waste would still go to incineration or
                    landfill. And it is not even the industry that wants to make this irrelevant improvement of
                    about 1% in 10 years happen. For this recycling volume to be reached, they request support
                    from public authorities to create and organise waste collection schemes. But waste
                    collection represents the crucial precondition and the most expensive part of recycling.
Recycling targets   The PVC industry commits to recycle in 2005 50% of windows and pipes. These two
for pipes and       applications represent only 4% of the total PVC post-consumer waste arising in 2005. The
windows             PVC industry does not make these recycling quotas depend on the total of these wastes
                    arising, but on the amounts of waste collected. As the PVC industry takes no responsibility
                    for collection of these wastes (see recycling in general), the targets become meaningless.
Recycling of        PVC waste pipes and windows contain hazardous stabilisers such as inter alia cadmium
PVC with            and lead compounds. Recycling these wastes would result in the distribution/dispersion? of
hazardous           these substances into new products. The PVC industry finds no fault with this.
stabilisers
Recycling of        The PVC industry admits that there are problems with the recycling of applications other
other PVC           than windows and pipes. These other applications however represent more than 95% of the
applications        PVC waste arising in 2005.
Plasticisers        The PVC industry promises to continue to do research and to help policy-makers develop
                    well-informed decisions at the earliest possible time. They will take appropriate risk
                    reduction measures, if warranted by the result of EU risk assessments. In other words, the
                    PVC industry commits to continue lobby policy-makers and to follow the law.
Cadmium             Members of the European Stabiliser Producers Association commit to stop selling cadmium
                    stabilisers to the European Union, Norway and Switzerland, but say nothing about exports.
                    Members of the European Plastic Converters are merely asked not to use cadmium-based
                    stabilisers. In other words, the Plastic Converters can continue to use cadmium stabilisers if
                    they wish and no targets are set to reduce their use.
Lead                The PVC industry state in their commitment that based on the current PVC volume it is
                    anticipated that the 120,000 tonnes of lead stabilisers sold in Europe in 1999 will decrease
                    to 80,000 tonnes in 2010. But based on the projected PVC volume (by the European Plastic
                    Converters) that would mean 105,000 tonnes of lead stabilisers sold in 2010. In other
                    words, the PVC industry will continue to use high quantities of lead based stabilisers.
Incineration        The PVC industry wants to promote and support the incineration of PVC wastes in the
                    disguise of energy recovery. According to the study by Bertin Technologies, incineration
                    of municipal solid waste without PVC results in a profit of around 15 Euro/tonne from
                    energy recovery. Burning PVC on the other hand costs between 20 to 330 Euro/tonne. So
                    PVC incineration can hardly be called energy recovery. The costs come from by the flue
                    gas treatment needed for PVC. This treatment creates significant amounts of hazardous
                    waste (0.8-1.4 kg/kg PVC in non-wet flue gas treatement). The industry tries to distract
                    from this absurdity by calling these hazardous wastes "salt residues". They want to support
                    technology developments to minimise the quantities of salt residues and to develop
                    purification technologies for them. But there is no way around it: as long as PVC is
                    incinerated, hazardous wastes are created, not to mention hazardous emissions.
Landfilling         The problems of landfilling are not addressed in the voluntary commitment.

The voluntary commitment of the PVC industry represents a classic example of distracting from the key
environmental problems related to PVC. The industry only presents concrete action on two specific
waste streams. These account for 4% of the waste arising in 2005. But the industry does not take any
responsibility for the very prerequisite for achieving these targets: waste collection. This makes these
promises meaningless. The commitment reveals that the industry is not prepared to discontinue the use
of hazardous additives and that they want to promote incineration. It has to be regarded as a cynical
attempt to stop the regulator from taking effective action against PVC by offering business as usual.

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                                                                                                    27 July, 2000