Going full circle
With sustainability becoming hugely important for both consumers and fabricators, Russell Hand, head of product management & technical at Rehau UK, discusses why value-added services from manufacturers, such as a frame recovery programme, can help fabricators and installers meet their sustainability goals.
Environmental pressures and drives for sustainability are encouraging recycling and reuse across all areas of our personal and professional lives.
Be this in the form of plastic packaging, cardboard boxes or waste materials from processes, recycling is now an important part of our society.
The importance of this means that recycling is no longer something that can be ignored by the fenestration industry. Many businesses have seen that they must do more to make their manufacturing processes more efficient and harness more of the waste material in their supply chain.
This is why a popular choice has been to use the power of the circular economy to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill.
Material matters
An important principle of utilising the circular economy is maintaining quality of products made using recycled materials. If quality were to be lost during the recycling process, then there would not be a huge incentive for many to switch to a circular system.
However, the properties of PVC-U within window manufacturing means it is an ideal material for recycling. There is a proven history of recycling PVC-U, which is the longest of all plastic materials. It can be recycled several times without a significant loss to performance, which creates a perfect ecological efficiency that is unmatched by other construction materials.
PVC-U window waste can therefore be shredded down into raw materials that are then used to manufacture new window profiles using a co-extrusion process with the recycled material.
Reducing the amount of PVC-U waste is important, especially as over 350 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated each year, with only 9% of it being recycled. This is why we try to make it as easy as possible for installers and fabricators to recycle their unused materials and waste.
For this to make commercial sense for them to do so, these systems must be competitively priced and made as simple as possible.
Adapting to the market
There are also conditions within the market that suggest that customers are turning towards sustainability when deciding what to purchase. A recent survey from Boston Consulting revealed that 76% of surveyed consumers were keen to play their part in embracing sustainability practices.
But, importantly, only 8% of these were willing to pay more for sustainable products and services. Therefore, it is clear that the key to building sustainable choices among consumers is through value-added services that provide clear sustainability benefits.
We have been putting this into practice within our group since 2014, when PVCR was acquired by the Rehau group. Based in Runcorn, PVCR enables us to process over 13,200 tonnes of post-consumer windows and doors per year, putting this output back into the manufacturing process.
In fact, during last year, 50% of the output at our Blaenau extrusion site was done using recycled materials, and that’s a number we hope to see increase moving forward. We also recently achieved gold certification for the third time in a row from EcoVadis, placing us in the top 5% of all participating companies and the top 1% in the plastic goods sector.
This tangible success makes it clear that making the process as clear as possible for installers and fabricators is key to fostering a circular economy within the fenestration industry, and in turn promoting greener manufacturing as a whole.
