Published: 17/03/2023
Ventilation industry leader Vent-Axia is celebrating Global Recycling Day, which takes place on 18 March 2023, by showing its commitment to expanding its range of recycled plastic ventilation products and meeting its environmental targets. Vent-Axia is leading the way in the ventilation sector with a market transformation to manufacturing from recycled material to improve indoor air sustainably. This includes its award-winning Lo-Carbon Multivent MEV range which literally broke the mould as the first MEV to be made from recycled plastic. This has now expanded to a wide range of products including its Positive Input Ventilation (PIV) units and Mixed Flow In-Line fans, helping customers in a wider range of sectors make more sustainable choices.
The company is committed to reducing its environmental impact by setting and meeting key targets: by the end of FY2025, over 70% of its products will be from one of its Lo-Carbon™ ranges and 90% of the products that it manufactures will be made from a recycled source. By manufacturing ventilation units from recycled plastic through open loop recycling, Vent-Axia is using a sustainable source of raw material; there is a reduction in the embodied carbon; it reduces plastic going to landfill; avoids the consumption of oil stocks; consumes less energy than producing new virgin polymers; and follows sustainable values reducing human environmental impact.
The sixth Global Recycling Day, organised by The Global Recycling Foundation, takes place on 18 March 2023. Recycling is a key part of the circular economy, helping to protect natural resources. Each year recyclables save over 700 million tonnes in CO2 emissions, and this is projected to increase to 1 billion tons by 2030. The mission of Global Recycling Day is: to tell world leaders that recycling is simply too important not to be a global issue, and that a common, joined up approach to recycling is urgently needed; and to ask people across the planet to think resourcefully and not be wasteful when it comes to the goods around us.
“Sustainability has always been core to our product innovation. We are committed to offering more sustainable choices for our customers through continuously improving our products’ energy performance, reducing waste throughout our products’ lifecycle and significantly increasing the use of recycled plastic from the circular economy in the manufacture of our products”, said Lena Hebestreit, Marketing Manager at Vent-Axia.
“This Global Recycling Day we are doubling down on ensuring we meet our ambitious targets so that by the end of FY2025, almost three-quarters of our products will be from our very energy efficient Lo-Carbon range and the vast majority of the products that we manufacture will be made from recycled plastic. We are proud of what we have achieved so far and excited about the developments we will make in the next few years.”
Using recycled plastic is a true innovation. Vent-Axia has previously reduced its single-use plastic waste and produced ducting from recycled plastic. But this innovation now moves to Vent-Axia’s core ventilation products, learning to work with recycled material, developing and manufacturing a robust product that performs to the same high standards as those made from virgin material whilst meeting all safety standards. The transformation from virgin to recycled plastic followed significant R&D, including extensive material and product testing, CFD analysis, FEA analysis, and FMEA analysis as well as investment in specialist manufacturing equipment.
Vent-Axia’s market-leading Multivent MEV range is now manufactured from a reliable, regularly available, recycled source of ABS plastic. This marks an industry step-change in ventilation manufacture, allowing Vent-Axia to produce the range in recycled plastic without affecting the unit’s function or award-winning performance. Designed to provide a simple and effective solution to help housebuilders meet the Future Homes Standard, the Multivent MEV range provides the ideal solution for new build residential projects, helping housebuilders meet DER requirements through market-leading energy efficiency and improving indoor air quality (IAQ) for homeowners. On top of this, the move to recycled plastic further improves the environmental credentials of the product for housebuilders and homeowners.
At current sales volumes, 34,440kg of recycled plastic is being used in place of virgin plastic per year for the MEV range. This equates to around 41,328kg less CO2 being created by the manufacturing process. The equivalent to 3,444,000 modern 500ml water bottles which weigh 10g each. And with MEV volume growth being at 17% over the last three years, these figures are set to grow.
The Multivent is only the first step - Vent-Axia is further showing its commitment to meeting its targets as it rolls out more products made from recycled plastic including its Lo-Carbon PoziDry ProTM Loft Positive Input Ventilation (PIV) - key to helping social housing providers meet their environmental targets. This move to using recycled plastic in the PoziDry ProTM Loft PIV forms part of the company’s commitment to becoming increasingly sustainable, including using recycled plastic in an ever-widening number of products. Since Vent-Axia started using recycled material on the PoziDry ProTM Loft PIV in June 2022 the company has used 43,897kg of recycled plastic instead of virgin plastic. This equates to 52,676kg less CO2 being created by the manufacturing process. Using recycled plastic for the PoziDry ProTM Loft PIV is designed to lower social housing's carbon footprint too, helping providers meet their carbon targets, while at the same time providing effective ventilation and a solution for hard-to-treat mould.
In addition, another recent product to make the move to recycled plastic is Vent-Axia’s ACM100 energy efficient Mixed Flow In-Line fans, helping commercial and industrial premises become more sustainable too. This move means Vent-Axia is making fans in recycled plastic to help customers in all sectors make more sustainable choices and they are continuing to add more fans to their recycled ranges.
To find out more about Global Recycling Day visit: https://www.globalrecyclingday.com.
If you would like to learn more about Vent-Axia’s drive towards sustainability, visit https://www.vent-axia.com/about-us/sustainable. For further information on all products and services offered by Vent-Axia telephone 0844 856 0590.