Original Article Construction and demolition waste as a source of PVC for recycling Sabrina Moretto Darbello Prestes 1 , Sandro Donnini Mancini 1 , Antonio Rodolfo Jr 2 and Raquel Carramillo Keiroglo 1 Abstract Construction and demolition waste can contain considerable amounts of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). This paper describes a study of the recycling of PVC pipes collected from such waste materials. In a sorting facility for the specific disposal of construction and demolition waste, PVC was found to represent one-third of the plastics separated by workers. Pipes were sorted carefully to preclude any possible contamination by poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) found in the waste. The material was ground into two distinct particle sizes (final mesh of 12.7 and 8 mm), washed, dried and recycled. The average formulation of the pipes was determined based on ash content tests and used in the fabrication of a similar compound made mainly of virgin PVC. Samples of recycled pipes and of compound based on virgin material were subjected to tensile and impact tests and provided very similar results. These results are a good indication of the application potential of the recycled material and of the fact that longer grinding to obtain finer particles is not necessarily beneficial. Keywords Recycling, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), construction and demolition waste, mechanical properties, pipes, plastics Date received: 11 January 2011; accepted: 16 May 2011 Introduction Most of the member states of the European Union, accord- ing to Del Rı´o et al. (2010), have no specific legislation for construction and demolition (C&D) waste management and those that do usually do not enforce it. However, the growth of the civil construction industry in the European Union in the last decade has led to a significant increase in the gener- ation of construction, renovation and demolition waste exceeding 450 million tones year 1 . This situation has led to the identification of efficient ways of managing all this raw material, aiming at its maximum possible reuse and/or recy- cling. Thus, several countries reuse and/or recycle most of their C&D waste, including the Netherlands (90%) and Belgium (87%), whereas others, such as Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland, present very low indices of reuse (lower than 5%) (Del Rı´o et al., 2010). In Brazil, a study conducted in nine cities found that the annual volume of C&D waste produced was 230 to 760 kg inhabitant 1 year 1 (Pinto, 1999). In this context, a federal law was passed in 2002 establishing that Brazil’s municipalities must implement Integrated Construction and Demolition Waste Management Plans that include incentives for the reuse and recycling of these waste materials (CONAMA, 2002). Despite this legislation, recycling and reuse of C&D waste in Brazil still faces various obstacles, such as the costs involved in removing and transporting these materials, stor- age sites, heterogeneity of origin and quality of products, negative perception on the part of clients, illegal deposits, unawareness of professionals about the legal guidelines, and informality of building jobs, among others. Therefore, no national recycling index of these waste materials exists to date (Da Rocha and Sattler, 2009). Several studies in the scientific literature deal with the management of C&D waste, offering information about the benefits resulting from their correct handling, as well as indi- ces of generation and recovery of the materials they contain, especially mortars, concrete, blocks, bricks, ceramic roof, floor and wall tiles, among others (Begum et al., 2009; Del Rı´o et al., 2010; Guzma´n et al., 2009; Kofoworola and 1 UNESP, Department of Environmental Engineering, Universidade Estadual Paulista, Campus Experimental de Sorocaba, Sorocaba, Brazil 2 Braskem S.A., Unidade Vinı ´licos. Sa ˜o Paulo, Brazil Corresponding author: Sandro Donnini Mancini, UNESP, Av. 3 de Marc¸o, 511, Sorocaba 18087-180, SP, Brazil Email: mancini@sorocaba.unesp.br Waste Management & Research 30(2) 115–121 Ó The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0734242X11413329 wmr.sagepub.com