Brussels, 26 July 2000. Greenpeace welcomed today's long-awaited publication of a Green Paper on polyviyl chloride (PVC) by the European Commission as an important step towards effective action against the many environmental hazards of PVC. Greenpeace demanded an immediate ban on PVC waste incineration and complete substitution of PVC material. A substitution would be fully in line with the Community waste management strategy as there is no safe disposal of PVC and reuse and recovery will not solve the problem.
"We are glad to see that the European Commission is taking the enormous environmental problems related to PVC seriously and intends to act against them" said Axel Singhofen, EU Toxics Advisor for Greenpeace International. "The evidence against PVC presented in the Green Paper is overwhelming - there can be only one consequence from it: PVC has got to go!"
The Green Paper assesses various environmental and health issues related in particular to PVC waste management (3) and presents a number of options to reduce those impacts. It also launches a public consultation process with a view to presenting a comprehensive Community Strategy on the environmental issues of PVC at the beginning of 2001.
"The Green Paper demonstrates that whatever disposal option you choose for PVC wastes, the environment will suffer", said Singhofen. "We call on the Commission to focus its future strategy on rapid and complete substitution of PVC."
The Green Paper states that, if the current trend in PVC waste management continues, the amount of PVC waste incinerated in Europe will increase more than fourfold over the next 20 years from 0.6 million tonnes to 2.5 million tonnes per year. Even if as much as possible were to be recycled, the amount of PVC waste to be burned would still only be lowered marginally.
The Commission's document reveals that incineration of PVC leads to the formation of enormous amounts of hazardous waste - in many cases more than was actually put into the incinerator. It states that all scenarios calculated showed that it is better for the environment not to incinerate PVC. It finally highlights that PVC waste incineration benefits from a hidden subsidy, as the additional costs for the special treatment required are not allocated to PVC, but spread across all wastes sent to incineration.
"Incinerating PVC is the worst possible option for its disposal, both environmentally and economically", said Axel Singhofen, EU Toxics Advisor for Greenpeace International. "If we do not ban the incineration of PVC as soon as possible, we will be flooded by huge amounts of hazardous wastes and poisonous emissions."
