Vinyl Cycle and SKM Recycling commence optical sorting of PVC bottles
Vinyl Cycle and SKM Recycling commence optical sorting of PVC bottles - Vinyl Council Australia
Media Statement |
| Vinyl Cycle, the Australian PVC industry’s voluntary post consumer bottle recycling initiative, and SKM Recycling (SKM) are collaborating to recover PVC cordial bottles from kerbside municipal waste. Vinyl Cycle has provided capital to SKM Recycling to enable the recycler to include optical sorting of PVC bottles in its operations. The first shipment of 24 tonnes of recovered PVC bottles has just been delivered to Vinyl Cycle’s PVC recycler in Geelong. Under the contract, SKM will deliver a minimum of 80 tonnes of PVC bottles – or over 1.5 million PVC cordial bottles a year. SKM uses an automated machine to separate PET, HDPE and PVC plastics. Vinyl Cycle was launched 11 years ago to develop the market for PVC recycling and to encourage councils to specify PVC in kerbside collections. Today, PVC bottles are collected from kerbside by most councils in Australia, and where the Materials Recovery Facilities (MRF’s) sort out the PVC, they are reprocessed into new products, under the Vinyl Cycle program. The program is funded by users of the PVC bottles, principally Schweppes Australia. Schweppes Australia’s Sustainability Manager, Greg Menz, sees the contribution as an opportunity to promote more post-consumer recycling. “Schweppes has a long-standing involvement in the Packaging Stewardship Forum of the Australia Food and Grocery Council and Vinyl Cycle which both address the issues of post-consumer waste. We would like to improve the level of post consumer recycled material we are working with and encourage other MRF’s to start sorting PVC bottles, and other plastics, automatically.” Vinyl Cycle Project Manager, Linda Terry, endorses the views of Mr Menz, saying “Our commitment to the vinyl industry is to have PVC recycled here in Australia. We would definitely encourage more MRF operators to commit to sorting PVC and to take advantage of our long term fixed pricing on offer”. Vinyl Cycle purchases baled PVC bottles from recyclers nationally. The bottles are sent to Cryo Grind Australia’s Geelong depot where they are washed, granulated and cryogenically ground to a powder which is sold as a replacement for virgin PVC resin. SKM Recycling has the capacity to sort 7 grades of plastic at its Coolaroo site. Business Manager, Rob Italiano, says “Once again SKM Recycling are setting the benchmark for the recycling industry in Australia by being the first recycler to extract and isolate PVC from within the recycling stream. We are proud to be involved in the Vinyl Cycle program and know that we are in a partnership that is proactive in its approach to the care of our environment.” |
| For more information contact Neva Law, Vinyl Council of Australia, directly on 03 9368 4857 and 0405 772 700, or info@vinyl.org.au. |
