ASSESSMENT of SECONDARY RESERVES OF POLYVINYL CHLORIDE IN JAPAN

Abstract

 It has been pointed out that there is the significant amount of stocks of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in our society because PVC products have long lifetime. These stocks can be seen as potential secondary resources. This study estimated Japan’s secondary PVC reserves, which was the amount of economically recyclable secondary resources out of PVC stocks in our society. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) the amount of PVC stocks as products was estimated 24 million tons in 2016 and the stocks were saturated recently because of the decrease in demand and increase in discard; (2) the amount of secondary PVC reserves were estimated 8,737 thousand tons, which corresponded to about 9 years of demand in 2016; (3) according to the secondary resource classification, secondary reserves that were supplied in a year were estimated 207 kilotons, which corresponded to about 0.2 times of demand in 2016, and the amount of PVC waste in managed landfill sites was almost equivalent to the amount of PVC stocks as products in our society.