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 Environment Daily June 3, 2004 Opponents scrap over EU review of PVC The European Commission has released a environmental review of PVC and its alternatives that could prove pivotal in restarting progress towards a long-promised communication on the controversial polymer. Europe's PVC industry and environmentalists have clashed over what it should mean for future EU policy. The study's roots go all the way back to a green paper on PVC's environmental implications issued by the European Commission in July 2000. In its response, the European parliament in 2001 called for an assessment of PVC's environmental impacts compared with alternatives ( ED 03/04/01 ). Throughout the debate, environmentalists, led by Greenpeace, have campaigned for large-scale substitution of PVC, claiming it to be wholly unsustainable and hazardous material. In response, Europe's PVC industry launched a voluntary commitment to improved environmental performance, latest results of which it reported in April ( ED 23/04/04 ). The consultancy study now released compares 30 published life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies comparing PVC in its major applications with competitive materials. It stresses that only assessments focused on specific applications can be meaningful. Applications reviewed are windows, flooring, roofing, pipes, cables, transport, packaging, consumer goods, toys, and medical applications. The results are complex. For example, no clear winners emerge between PVC, aluminium or wood used to make window frames. Linoleum flooring has "slightly fewer" impacts than PVC flooring, according to most studies. Polymer roofing systems, including PVC, "tend to have lower" impacts than bitumen according to the two available studies. Critically, the consultants do not quantify the relative performance of materials in particular applications. Nor do they do so across applications. Nor do they attempt to reconcile the often divergent conclusions of individual LCA studies. All of which leaves wide scope for interest groups to draw their own conclusions. The study "confirms that PVC is as good as any material", said the European council of vinyl manufacturers (ECVM) in its first response. So there is "no reason to treat PVC any differently from any other material". The association urged the Commission to issue its long-promised communication. For Greenpeace, however, the study "clearly shows that alternative materials are preferable to PVC in many applications". The NGO called on the Commission to "promote alternative materials" in the light of the findings.Challenged to respond to ECVM's conclusion that PVC emerges overall as no better or no worse than other materials, the group stressed that LCAs capture only a part of the polymer's overall impacts. It described the study as a distraction from PVC's broader environmental and health problems. As the report itself acknowledges, LCAs cannot capture health risks, which in the case of softened PVC use in children's toys has been a key concern. These non-LCA concerns alone justify a policy of PVC substitution, the group insisted. |
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