The UK’s two main PVC manufacturers have agreed to produce partnership reports looking at the impact of their products on society.
The Dutch-owned European Vinyl Corporation (EVC), which has a UK base in Runcorn, and Norwegian-owned Hydro Polymers, which works from Newton Aycliffe, have made the pledge as part of a charter signed with a group of four supermarket chains – Asda, Waitrose, Tesco and the Co-operative Wholesale Society.
The PVC manufacturers and retailers are members of the PVC Co-ordination Group, which is chaired by leading environmental campaigner Jonathon Porritt and run by the National Centre for Business and Ecology (NCBE), a sustainability consultancy set up by the Co-operative Bank and four universities in Manchester.
Group members recently signed up to a charter committing them to seven courses of action – one of which pledged the EVC and Hydro Polymers to produce partnership reports. NCBE project manager Penny Street said the reports would ‘look at all possible futures for PVC, carry out an assessment of stakeholder views and look at ways in which the companies can work with their partners’.
Work on a code of practice for the manufacturers – one of the charter’s other pledges – is almost complete, and the co-ordination group will shortly begin to examine ways of reducing the impact of PVC through the supply chain.
Green campaigners claim the manufacture and disposal of PVC can release carcinogens into the environment, and that alternatives must be sought.