VinylPlus (Brussels / Belgium; www.vinylplus.eu), the European PVC industry’s sustainability initiative, unveiled “VinylPlus Med”, a collaborative project promoting the scheme to recycle discarded but non-infectious single-use polyvinyl chloride medical devices, such as oxygen and anesthetic masks, tubing, IV and dialysis bags. VinylPlus had previously announced other sustainability initiatives (see Plasteurope.com of 12.06.2020) that ended up recycling more than 771,000 t of PVC in 2019.

Medical PVC waste comprises of products typically used just once, for a short period of time, on non-infectious patients, and can be recycled, significantly reducing the environmental impact of hospitals, and also accelerating the sustainability of the material. The VinylPlus Med partnership builds on the success of the VinylPlus-funded “RecoMed” recycling scheme of PVC masks and tubing. The pilot project in Belgium will recycle REACH-compliant PVC medical plastic waste into a wide range of value products, states Brigette Dero, managing director of VinylPlus.

Project partners include Europe Hospitals (Brussels / Belgium; www.cliniquesdeleurope.be), a hospital group that will supply PVC waste of three dialysis facilities to the project, the Belgium commercial division of waste-management company Renewi (Edinburgh / Scotland; www.renewi.com) acting as the waste manager, and PVC recycler Raff Plastics (Houthulst / Belgium; www.raffplastics.be).