In a letter to The Malta Independent, the Brussels-based European Council of Vinyl Manufacturers (ECVM) said that it is not true that plastics are very harmful when they end up in landfills. ECVM also contested NTM’s statement that PET plastic, which is environmentally less harmful as it is potentially recyclable, should be taxed at a lower rate than PVC plastic, which cannot be recycled. NTM had issued a statement reacting to the eco-contribution law in which, among other things, it stated that “plastics are harmful to human health when they end up in our landfills and thus whoever uses them should pay the eco-tax.”

NTM had argued that there should be an educational campaign accompanying the eco-tax to help the public discriminate between products that may be less eco-friendly than others.

The statement, published in this newspaper on 22 July, went on to say that “PET plastic... is environmentally less harmful, as it is potentially recyclable, (and) should be taxed at a lower rate than PVC plastic, which cannot be recycled.”

After reading TMID’s report on our website, ECVM executive director Jean Pierre De Greve wrote to state that landfills are a waste of valuable resources, but that they have never caused any concern for human health. Some plastics may slowly decompose under aerobic and anaerobic conditions, releasing carbon dioxide or methane – both of which are greenhouse gasses but not toxic, Mr De Greve added.

Other materials, such as PVC, “remain inert in the landfill and hence do not pose any risk to human health”, as was demonstrated in a comprehensive study by the Hamburg and Rostock Universities, Mr De Greve wrote.

Regarding NTM’s claim that PVC plastic cannot be recycled, Mr De Greve said that, on the contrary, PVC can and is being recycled. He went on to quote from a study by the Swiss institute Prognos, carried out on behalf of the EU commission in 1999.

The study showed that 420,000 tonnes per year of pre-consumer PVC was already recycled in the EU and that the trend was expected to continue because of its favourable economics. Moreover, close to 100,000 tonnes of post-consumer PVC waste was recycled each year.

The recycling of large volumes of PVC waste was also confirmed by a green paper on PVC published by the European Commission in 2001 and by a comparative life cycle assessment between PVC and alternative materials in different applications, the letter continued. “The conclusions of this study clearly shows that PVC should not be discriminated against,” Mr De Greve wrote. Various technologies are used to recycle PVC waste, Mr De Greve pointed out. These include conventional mechanical recycling, in which the waste is transformed into PVC or mixed plastics products. There is also mechanical recycling by dissolution as well as feedstock recycling. ECVM is an active member of Vinyl 2010 – the voluntary commitment of the PVC industry – and is working to deliver 200,000 tonnes of post-consumer PVC recycling by 2010 over and above the recycling achieved through regulated waste streams, such as packaging and end-of-life vehicles and above the 100,000 tonnes already recycled in 2000.