Plastics Reckoning: PVC Is Ubiquitous, But Maybe Not for Long
Nicola Jones | February 15, 2024 | Yale Environment 360
The word “vinyl” might sound innocuous, bringing to mind everyday items like LP records, flooring, pipes, or shiny plastic pants. The plastic this name refers to — polyvinyl chloride (PVC) — is the world’s third-most widely produced synthetic polymer, with more than 50 million tons cranked out each year for everything from window frames to food wrap, fake leather car seats to medical products. It’s everywhere.
But environmentalists and NGOs have been raising alarms about PVC for decades. Scientists have established that its precursor chemical is carcinogenic; that some of the additives used to make it flexible can muck with hormones; and that it can spew noxious compounds, especially when burned. It’s “the worst of the worst” when it comes to plastics, says Judith Enck, a policy expert with Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit based at Bennington College in Vermont. Now, vinyl’s heyday may finally be drawing to an end.
This year, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution will be attempting to finalize the world’s first plastics treaty, with the ambitious mandate to end — not just limit — plastics pollution. Treaty discussions so far have ranged over how best to stem plastic production, phase out single-use plastics, boost recycling, mandate the incorporation of those recycled materials into new products, and establish a list of particularly problematic substances. That list, which many experts say should include PVC, would be akin to the list of ozone-depleting substances in the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which successfully phased out harmful compounds including chlorofluorocarbons, known as CFCs.
So, will 2024 spell the beginning of the end for PVC? And how might the world adjust to its absence?
