Polyvinyl chloride was one of the first plastics to be developed and over the years it has been pressed into use in all kinds of applications. It is a staple of the construction industry, used in guttering, plumbing and many other purposes.
Likewise the digital display graphics sector has been built on the ready availability of PVC. It is used in films, wall graphics, building wraps and pop up banners. It can be printed by any inkjet method. It is low cost, it is durable. And it is made from compounds that have been implicated in cancers, as well as damage to the immune and reproductive systems. If PVC were to be introduced today, it would quite possibly be banned. Indeed its use in children’s toys has been curtailed.
This is not because the material is immediately harmful or dangerous to those handling and using it. The problem with PVC, and it is a major problem, is at the end of life. It cannot be recycled easily. It cannot be be incinerated for energy because this releases a dangerous cocktail of dioxins, acids and more. The vast majority of PVC used in the printing industry ends up in landfill where it may take hundreds of years to decompose, and when it does, will leach unwanted chemicals into the soil and thence into rivers and the oceans.
The end of life issue is now starting to seep into the consciousness of major construction and retail business as these adopt sustainability policies that minimise the impact that their supply chains have on the environment. These and other business are in the public eye and cannot afford to be associated with anything harmful to the planet. PVC is one of those materials that will cause this sort of problem. This will spur the take up of alternatives to PVC, even with a small premium.
However, many smaller brands and buyers will purchase banners without thinking that there may be a problem. Printers will advertise the fact that they are environmentally conscious by using eco solvent inks, but will still print on PVC. There is fierce competition for this business, based on offering the lowest price possible. A pop up banner can be had for around £30, less in some cases. If these printers are aware that PVC is a problem, it is not publicised on the websites that buyers interact with. Nor are eco friendly alternatives generally advertised. Not for the first time, the industry is not educating its customer base.
There are some ways to recycle PVC, using it to make traffic cones for example, but it is not being done in this country and this can only scratch the surface of the mountain of useless PVC that the printing industry generates each year. Blue Castle Group had set up a recycling system for PVC where printed banners would be shredded for use as flooring in the equestrian industry. Demand has dried up during the pandemic lockdowns and Blue Castle has halted the project. Instead it is helping partner Soyang Europe to recommend PVC-free alternatives which can be processed after use rather than PVC which cannot. Some PVC banners find a second life in agriculture, covering silage for example, or in livestock sheds, but again this is only a fraction of what is produced. And now the shipping of PVC across borders has been constrained by the Basel Convention. This controls the cross border movement of hazardous waste and in an amendment introduced at the start of this year, movements of PVC need to be notified to the destination country and consent received before shipping.
The movement of PVC is not banned, but even without Brexit, it has become significantly more difficult. The industry cannot export its problems.
That there is a problem is well known. Many of the larger display printers have been looking for alternatives to PVC for some years. The 2012 Olympics demanded the use of recyclable materials for example, and while suppliers confirmed and used materials that were available, none was about to win medals for durability and performance.
Since then the search for suitable like for like alternatives has continued and substrate suppliers aware that the net is closing on PVC, have been stepping up efforts to come up with viable alternatives. That relates both to the use of recyclable materials and the cost of these substrates.
A Chinese made product called Kavalan is ahead of the pack at the moment. It is available in the UK through CMYUK which has been working with both the supplier and a number of printers to validate the claims made for it. There is no problem in terms of performance. The printers says that it behaves and feels very much like a PVC. It welds just as well and has the same strength and outdoor durability as PVC. In its favour Kavalan is half the weight of the equivalent PVC and while it is not easily recyclable, it can be safely burned in a commercial incinerator to capture locked in energy and prevent disposal in landfill.
The banner material has the same PE carcass as a PVC banner, but the face material is completely different. With PVC it is currently extremely different to separate the PVC layer and the backing material. With Kavalan, the top layer coating splits easily from the carcass. Each can be processed separately.
Taya, its developer, has created a range of 12 Kavalan products for different purposes as alternatives to those using PVC. Taya says that in production there is a 35% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 44% drop in water consumption. The Kavalan film products show an even greater drop, including 73% drop in cancer toxicity.
The drawback is that the product has to be shipped from China, at least for the moment. This is a five-week journey with the associated carbon impact. In the UK CMYUK has evangelised about the benefits of Kavalan and holds UK distribution. The Chinese company has signed a deal with Neschen Coating and Filmolux for European supply. Distribution deals might grow into licensed manufacturing.
Kavalan is not alone.
Soyang has developed a product that follows the same path, of a coating that is easy to separate from the backing for recycling. “The market is open to alternatives,” says Soayng managing director Mark Mashiter. “Printers want to see more than one supplier.”
Soyang’s product has a close resemblance to Kavalan both in terms of composition and in performance, meeting industry standards on safety, fire and performance. In the UK the company is building a larger logistics facility to ensure there is adequate stock available.
Development, he suggests, has been helped by the lockdowns and drop in activity. This has given the technicians who would normally be engaged in quality and process control the opportunity to explore new materials and methods.
Other companies are in the game and have products that are said to match the beneficial attributes of PVC without the drawbacks. Ultraflex introduced Bioflex in 2006 as a supposedly biodegradable material, but without much market impact. There is also a PET material for banners with a mesh version likely to follow. The company says that PVC is not the idea material for a pop up banner, regardless of recyclability. When used multiple times, the edge is likely to fray and creases do not fall out. The PET option, potentially made from recycled bottles, is more durable, easier and lighter to handle, does not require a base carcass for the printable layer. But is not as popular.
Likewise Innotech, where regional sales lead Derek Shedden describes the company as “the industry’s best kept secret” because few understand the size of its business. Ultraflex has more than £5 million of stock held in a 3 million m2 in its warehouse.“Innotech has invested heavily in PVC-free ranges, having first introduced PVC-free products to the UK six years ago,” he says. “These ranges cover applications for both internal and external uses, from one-piece wall graphics, interior display and decor through to external banners, building wraps and campaign banners.”
Its brochure detailing the product range of green substitutes, says: “Virtually every project that previously used harmful plastics can now be done with the peace of mind that materials used are not going to damage our environment.”
Those paper merchants supplying commercial printers with banner materials are aware of the PVC issue, but have limited choice of non PVC alternatives. Antalis grades the environmental impact of all its products with the Green Star system. It banner material is branded under the Coala name, uses PVC and receives a one-star rating on this rating system.
Antalis declares that it wants 75% of its products to be rated with three or more stars by 2030, making these eco responsible products. The paper division has already exceeded this target. However, the proliferation of plastic in the visual communications division makes this area more challenging. The green star system “considers key factors such as the type of raw material used and the recyclability at end of life for each product”.
Chris Green explains that the market will not change by itself. However, sustainability at the start of this year “it does now feel we are in a far better position to start to address some of the big questions surrounding sustainability”.
The introduction of the Green Star system is a significant step in this direction, and says there is more to do. It is working through each product auditing how it is producing to calculate the rating. “We are having great success in applying the same audit approach to our customers business purchases which is leasing to some surprising results and interesting conversations about improving sustainable product selection,” he says.
Lasting change in prising printers from their PVC habit will also require government legislation in the form of landfill taxes, single use plastic regulations and moves to enforce a circular economy.
Premier Paper, which is a more recent entrant into display graphics, has extended its carbon capture scheme to the sector. “We calculate the carbon emissions from product and offset via Woodland Trust,” says a spokesman.
“CO2 emissions from the production, storage and distribution of all branded ETec products can also be mitigated by planting trees with the Woodland Trust carbon capture programme.”
There is a brochure which details the more environmentally friendly alternatives, covering wall coverings and window films as well as banner materials. The merchant continues to offer the PVC based products as well. Simply the population of buyers is not aware there is a problem and will specify the familiar and less expensive product, and will continue to do so until the alternatives match PVC in all its attributes. Or until legislation forces abolition.
One of the largest digital display printers points out that these conditions have not yet been met. James Morris, sales director of Gardners in Cardiff says: “Going PVC-free should be one of many initiatives to support sustainability and effective plastics management and we must also be mindful of key technical specifications that exist currently that can dictate fabric/substrate use. Such as fire rating, wind loading or tensile strength that some ‘greener’ fabrics do not comply with at the moment. In time, I’m sure PVC-free materials will start to address these key requirements.
“What is worse, is to claim to be PVC-free while being unable to provide any end of life infrastructure choices or economic alternative to landfill. The market will hopefully drive an increasing number of solutions and develop wider recycling infrastructure alongside them to accommodate this increase.
“It is encouraging to see suppliers really starting to drive this change as historically alternatives for digital printers were technically difficult to print and mainly ignored. Going PVC-free is not new. At Gardners we started replacing banner grade PVC for all major banner contracts with matching green and viable waste streams back in 2007. And we remain passionate about driving substrate change across display.”
Kavalan seems to be making the difference, even if it does not have all the answers. A number of construction companies are starting to specify it as a scaffold wrap for renovation projects. It is not unthinkable for local authorities asked to approve scaffold wraps to insist that the material used should have end of life traceability.
CMYUK has also addressed the recycling issue striking a deal with Howe to Recycle, a company that will collect the material at end of use and deliver it to an incinerator for conversion to energy or to an upcycling project. This is backed by certification to show what has happened to the material, thus reassuring both the printer and the reputation sensitive end customer. The material is picked up from the printer and taken to Howe to Recycle’s facilities for processing.
The choice of material for large format printing is increasingly about what happens after printing as much as it is about what happens during printing. That is something to be welcomed, and while it will add to costs, is not something to be fearful of. Sustainability is not going away. But PVC might be.
