1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; 2. Department of Manufacturing and Civil Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik 2815, Norway; 3. Institute for Circular Economy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; 4. Advanced Materials Laboratory of Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Abstract：China has become the world's largest producer and consumer of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics and is facing various environmental risks from the widespread use of PVC plastics. This paper presents a dynamic material flow model to quantitatively assess PVC resins and their additives to illustrate the complex flow paths and stock distributions of PVC materials across 8 types of products, 6 sectors and 4 methods of waste management. The results showed that from 1978 to 2017, the cumulative output of PVC resins and additives was 254 million tons. PVC plastic products are mostly hard products as China has become more urbanized, with PVC additives mostly used in soft products. The building and construction sector accounted for 65.8% of the total stock of PVC resin and 41.9% of the total stock of PVC additives, which will be a future source of waste. Although the proportion of additives with potential environmental and health risks in the total inflow of additives dropped from 62.2% to 41.5%, 15 million tons of toxic additives remain in use which will have a lasting negative impact on health and the environment through migration and diffusion during their use. Although these results have some limitations due to limited data availability, the uncertainty analysis showed that the results were still very reliable. In the future, the government should strengthen the management of waste PVC plastics and increase the proportion of environmentally friendly additives through technological progress and policy guidance.
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2020, Vol. 60 
