The Vinyl Council of Australia (VCA) and Australian Vinyls have released an updated Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) for Australian made PVC resin.

Having successfully gone through peer-review, the data has now been uploaded on AusLCI, the Australian Life Cycle Inventory database.

The update will replace the old inventory developed in 2001, which was based on plants and process input data of the PVC resin supply chain from the late 1990s.

The LCI system boundary is pictured, the full report is available here:

From the VCA:

“We are very pleased that this data has been updated, independently reviewed and made available through AusLCI to LCA specialists,” VCA Chief Executive, Sophi MacMillan, said.

“It means they can use data that accurately reflects current practices of the Australian PVC industry, and updating and publishing the data also reflects our long-held commitment towards transparency”.

The PVC resin manufacturer, Australian Vinyls, has seen significant improvements in its environmental performance and changes to the supply chain since that time, warranting a thorough update of the life cycle inventory.

Growing development of building product life cycle assessments and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), encouraged today in the Green Star rating tool developed by the Green Building Council of Australia, have also heightened the imperative to make current data available. As the only PVC resin manufacturer in Australia, the data is specific to Australian Vinyls and will be particularly valuable therefore to the company’s downstream customers.

“This data will better enable LCA practitioners and manufacturers using Australian PVC to undertake LCAs and develop EPDs which are increasingly becoming part of the competitive advantage”, the Technical Committee Chair of the Australian Life Cycle Database Initiative (AusLCI), Tim Grant said. “ALCAS is delighted to have local data from Australian Vinyls in AusLCI”.

Collecting the information required to build an LCI is often a lengthy process, more so when supply chains are complex and involve international partners. As part of this project, data was collected from a number of sources, including Australian Vinyls, their major supplier in the US and the most up to date literature and overseas inventories available.

The result of the Australian PVC resin LCI shows environmental impacts very comparable to those described within the European PVC dataset.

The LCI report can be found here