Seeking Sustainable Development on a Level Playing Field: A PVC Case Study

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Humans have exploited a huge diversity of materials throughout history. Today’s conflict between rising demands and dwindling resources raises searching questions about how optimally to meet humanity’s needs efficiently and safely, challenging common assumptions. Plastics support many facets of modern life yet raise associated problems, whilst ‘natural’ materials may be far from benign when inputs extending their longevity are considered.

PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is a plastic with adaptable, durable and other properties used in diverse construction, medical, information technology, domestic and many applications besides. However, PVC has faced significant NGO pressure relating to its chlorine content and the range of additives conferring desirable properties. Yet, unlike organochlorine pesticides, PVC plastic is inert and recyclable after providing long service life. This book is not ‘pro-PVC’, but draws on lessons learned from how the PVC value chain, particularly across Europe, has engaged with problems and made further progress under voluntary commitments to sustainable development.

The book advocates a ‘level playing field’ of common sustainability principles for assessment of the benefits and risks of the use of all materials in the context of their incorporation within whole product life cycles, from raw material extraction to beyond end-of-life. The use of every material raises specific challenges, but also shares common problems arising from society’s legacy of wasteful, linear resource use.

Activities surrounding the PVC value chain have generated novel ideas, assessment techniques and reconsideration of regulatory approaches relevant to sustainability assessment of the use of all materials in the context of whole product life cycles on a common ‘level playing field’, which best supports the meeting of the diversity of human needs in the safest and most efficient manner.

This book is aimed at industry, regulatory and NGO audiences and influence on wider media.

Professor Mark Everard is a Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University, as well as Associate Professor of Ecosystem Services at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol). He also works as a consultant, broadcaster and author. Mark is Vice-President of the Institution of Environmental Sciences (IES), a Fellow of the Linnaean Society, an Angling Trust Ambassador, and a science advisor to WildFish (formerly Salmon & Trout Conservation UK), Tiger Water (India), Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and a range of other bodies.

Mark has worked with the PVC sector since 1999, then as Director of Science with the international NGO The Natural Step (TNS), developing the ‘five TNS Sustainability Challenges for PVC’ that have since been embodied in revised form as the five key challenges of the VinylPlus voluntary commitment across the European PVC sector. Mark continues to work with the PVC sector and other businesses and policy areas, as well as serving in academia and broadcast media, to promote practical progress with society’s greatest sustainability challenges.

Mark’s work with PVC and other materials is part of a wider portfolio of systems and sustainable development research, advocacy and communication (including 40 books as over 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers as well as frequent magazine, TV and radio contributions) on natural resource management particularly in the developing, river and catchment management, and a range of other disciplines.