Vinyl Industry Teams Up For Winning Olympic Recycling Effort
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 11, 2010 – Once the last medals were awarded and the 2010 Winter Olympic Games came to a close, a major vinyl recycling effort took off, a team effort of the Vinyl Council of Canada, 3M Canada Company, and Mannington Commercial Flooring.
3M Canada Company was the official supplier of building and vehicle vinyl wraps for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. About 200,000 square feet of vinyl graphics were used on Olympic buildings such as the Richmond Olympic Oval and the Pacific Coliseum, outdoor venue grandstands, 4,600 vehicles, 500 buses, and eight resurfacing machines.
To support their sustainability objectives, 3M Canada looked for ways to reclaim the wraps after use, as a material stream for recycled products. The Vinyl Council of Canada, a Council of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, worked closely with 3M Canada to help them in their recycling efforts, and introduced them to Mannington Commercial, a vinyl flooring company with a long track record of vinyl recycling projects.
Mannington tested the recycling of the 3M vinyl wraps as a raw material for its floor products, and the testing yielded positive results, so an agreement was made. All of 3M’s vinyl graphic material from the 2010 Olympics has been diverted from landfill and is being remanufactured into Mannington high recycled content flooring.
"Through the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, we learned about Mannington's precedent for recycling mixed waste similar to our graphic materials into flooring," says Richard Chartrand, Vice President, Display and Graphics Business, 3M Canada. "Most recycling facilities would quickly turn away from the colorful, irregular shaped lumps that the graphics result in after use, but Mannington was up for the challenge."
Dave Kitts, Mannington Vice President – Environment, said, "One of the simplest ways to conserve resources is to reuse what you can. We've found second lives for many flooring products and were intrigued by the opportunity presented by 3M Canada."
Mannington is recycling the graphics into Premium Tile, a product popular in commercial healthcare, education, and retail applications. The Premium Tile product already contains post-consumer waste streams including drywall and vinyl tile reclaimed from renovation sites, and is certified as an Environmentally Preferable Product, meeting the rigorous requirements of NSF-332-2007 certification.
First, the graphic materials were peeled manually from windows, vehicles, and walls piece by piece, and heated to soften the pressure-sensitive adhesive and reduce the pull-off force needed. The material was then balled up, placed in clear collection bags, loaded on truck trailers, and driven to Mannington’s Salem, N.J. manufacturing facility.
There the material is ground into fine pieces, evaluated for color, and measured and added to a limestone mixture, then blended and heated to desired consistency and sent through large rollers to form long sheets. The sheets are then broken up and combined with other color-controlled lots. Then the final mixture is blended, reheated, and rolled out to yield sheets of desired patterns, and stamped to create 12”by 12” flooring tiles which are packaged and ready for sale.
"We have been looking for waste streams to increase the amount of post-consumer content that we can use in our products,” says John Emmons, Director of Commercial Manufacturing at Mannington. “The arrangement was not only a great way to support this 3M Canada initiative; it also made very good business sense."
3M Canada’s Chartrand noted 3M’s graphics created “a dramatic visual impact at the 2010 Winter Games, and our partnership with Mannington will help limit our environmental impact after the Games end. 3M considers this recycling program a significant step in the right direction for creating a positive environmental shift in our industry.”
Marion Axmith, the Director General of the Vinyl Council of Canada, noted, “The vinyl industry can be proud that our industry has contributed to greening of the 2010 Olympic Games, thanks to the efforts of 3M Canada Company, Mannington, and the Vinyl Council of Canada.
For more information, visit www.3m.ca/2010, www.manningtoncommercial.com, and www.plastics.ca/vinyl.
The Vinyl Institute represents the leading manufacturers involved in the production of PVC/vinyl resin in the United States, and promotes the value of PVC/vinyl products to society.
For more information on The Vinyl Institute, contact:
Jeffrey B. Palmer
Director of Marketing & Communications
The Vinyl Institute
571-970-3327
jpalmer@vinylinfo.org
Also go to: www.vinylindesign.com, www.vinylinfo.org, and www.achievegreen.net.