Celebrating & Communicating Success
Vinyl Resin, Compounding & Additives
For nearly four decades the vinyl resin industry has designed and implemented worker safety best practices and new technologies that continuously improve our facilities’ health, safety and environmental performance. Each year the Vinyl Institute recognizes facilities with outstanding performance.
Worker safety and safety training are top priorities.
The industry recognized 10 facilities in 2017 with no OSHA recordable incidents the previous year. And the industry had 9 facilities that had no OSHA recordable incidents for a period of five or more consecutive years.
Eliminating harmful heavy metals.
Lead stabilizers were completely phased out of rigid vinyl in the U.S. in the early 1990s and phased out of flexible applications in 2006. To the VI’s knowledge, no lead was ever used as a stabilizer in vinyl pipe produced in the United States.
U.S. vinyl chloride producers have not relied upon chlorine from mercury cell technology facilities for nearly a decade. Vinyl chloride is the primary raw material in the manufacture of PVC resin and is produced at integrated sites that manufacturer chlorine with modern diaphragm or membrane type technology.
More than 1 Billion pounds of PVC/vinyl is recycled annually in North America.
Of the 15 billion pounds of vinyl resin produced annually, approximately 7 billion pounds goes into water infrastructure, which is in the ground and has a service life of more than 100 years (source USU study). According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s annual sustainable materials management report, vinyl materials represent less than 3 percent of the plastics in landfills in the United States.
Vinyl Resin, Compounding and Additives Sustainability Resources include Vinyl Resin Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), The Role of PVC Resins in Sustainable Design; Recycling as a Sustainability Practice in the North American Vinyl Industry; and Material Matters: Vinyl’s Role in Sustainability, Resilience and the Education of Design Professionals.
Vinyl Product Sector Sustainability Efforts to date
Each vinyl product sector, and companies within each sector, are at different stages of their sustainability journey. Product sector successes to date include:
