PVC industry fights to avoid global ban

This is the era of environmentalism – the vital, the misguided, the rational, the emotional, but overall, the way the world must go. Domestic markets in poor countries are sheltered to some extent because for them, price is the main determinant. But when they become exporters, they must follow the rules of their target nations.

Two products in the leather value chain have come under sustained pressure: leather itself, in all its forms, at all stages of its production, and at least some plastics, including PVC.

Leather can and should come through this not just as a survivor, but with enhanced environmental credentials. It’s a renewable waste product, that can be turned into a functional, attractive end product in a series of clean technologies, with an end-of-life biodegradability. There’s a lot that industry needs to do to perfect that, but it can be done.

Plastics have a much harder hill to climb. The revelations of just how much plastics have polluted the entire environment make them, as a group, among the most environmentally damaging products on earth, and through the food chain, poisonous to people. And that’s before the ubiquitous visual plastic pollution in every open space, every beach, every river…

PVC is the material of choice in several product lines, from pipes to medical products. In footwear, in the 1980s, it became the soling material of choice (replacing rubber) and as a coated fabric, the low-cost upper material of choice. Since then, it remains the predominant soling material for school shoes and gumboots, but competes with TPR, TPU, PU and EVA for most other soling. In South Africa at least, as prices have come under more and more pressure, it has recaptured a bigger share of basic footwear soling. It is no longer used for safety footwear, where rubber retains a place. In upper materials, it has been replaced by various PU-coated and microfibre fabrics for upper materials.

But globally, there is an effort to ban it altogether.

Monique Holtzhausen, CEO of the Southern African Vinyls Association (SAVA), explained to members the latest developments at United Nations negotiations held in Paris at the end of May on a binding global agreement on plastic waste.