Photo Courtesy ©Tian-Fangfang

Perspectives on PVC: What Is the Path Forward?

Three experts offering distinct perspectives unpack the complexities—and possibilities—of designing with (or without) PVC.

Polyvinyl chloride—better known as PVC or vinyl—is one of the most ubiquitous plastics in our lives. You’ll find it everywhere: pipes, siding, wiring, flooring, upholstery, wall coverings, and even old-school vinyl records. Sixty-one percent of all PVC produced globally is used in buildings and construction. It’s more fire-retardant than any other common plastic, and with the addition of plasticizers, it can be made as flexible as fabric or as rigid as wood. 

In certain building types—like hospitals, hotels, and schools—PVC products are widely used because they’re durable, easy to maintain, and able to carry patterns and color. But many sustainability experts and design teams are urging the industry to reduce or avoid PVC where possible.

When PVC isn’t responsibly manufactured or disposed of, it can expose workers and nearby communities to harmful dioxins. Poorly regulated PVC can also contain other chemicals of concern, such as heavy metals. For these reasons, the International Living Future Institute keeps PVC on its Red List of materials to avoid. 

So what’s the path forward? Should we focus on making PVC as safe and clean as possible or invest in finding alternative materials that offer the same performance benefits? 

In the latest episode of Deep Green, created with Mannington Commercial, host Avi Rajagopal sits down with three experts offering distinct perspectives: Shane Totten, vice president of sustainability at Mannington Commercial, which produces both certified, transparent PVC flooring and non-PVC resilient flooring options; David Briefel, sustainability director and principal at Gensler, and co-creator of the Gensler Product Sustainability Standards—a set of material requirements for the firm’s projects; and Annzie Barfield, interior design specialist at LaBella Associates, who works on education, health-care, and senior living spaces where PVC products are often the default for flooring and wall protection. 

Together, they unpack the complexities—and possibilities—of designing with (or without) PVC. Read an excerpt from their conversation below or listen to the full episode on the Surround Podcast Network

PVC Insights from the Manufacturer’s Lens

Avinash Rajagopal: Can you give us an overview of how Mannington has been grappling with the question of PVC and PVC alternatives over the last few years.

Shane Totten: Sure. I like to start my conversations with designers by asking them if they still design buildings and interior environments the way they did 50 years ago. It opens designers up to the idea that even manufacturers and the supply chain evolve over time. Things aren’t always where designers believe they are regarding products, product safety, and even what the best product for the best application is. I would say that on the American manufacturing side, I’m clear to make that distinction for a couple of reasons.  

Resin manufacturing for PVC specifically has evolved. It is highly efficient, both in terms of energy and material use. And it’s also a closed system. When you look at the way the processes used in those environments have evolved—from the nasty mercury and asbestos diaphragm to the modern membranes that are in closed-loop systems—you see a strategic evolution in the quality of the product. End products have also evolved with the elimination of heavy metals and toxic additives like ortho-phthalates and PFAS coatings.

The American PVC resin industry is highly regulated. OSHA limits the amount of time workers can be exposed to single digit parts per million of the product. In 2022, the vinyl value chain’s collective incident rate was 30 percent below the rest of the chemical industries in the United States, and it was 20 percent of manufacturing’s rates overall in the country. Emissions are tightly controlled by the government. They are down 86 to 96 percent since 1987, and from resin manufacturers, they contribute less than 0.6 of a percent nationally when you’re talking about emissions related to vinyl manufacturing. Even the Department of Transportation regulates the transportation of ingredients across the value chain, some more stringently than others. 

At Mannington, we’ve eliminated 15 ingredients and classes of ingredients from our products because we learned over time that those were materials of concern and we needed to eliminate them for both our associates’ and our customers’ safety. So, we look at a process of continuous improvement every day, and we use that to challenge ourselves. We add to that rigor of trying to be better every day by setting the standard that we operate by. We have adopted a supplier code of conduct that regulates what we expect to see from our supply chain and within that, there’s a material substance managed list. All of that is how we build trust and transparency that we offer to our customers through our transparency documents. We don’t hide anything that’s in our products.  

AR: You’ve also added new options when it comes to resilient flooring alongside your traditional products, which has taken a lot of innovation and development. 

ST: There’s enormous pressure in certain markets across the country for PVC-free options, and we recognize that and respect our design industry’s ability to meet their needs with products that fit those goals. So, we have worked on developing PVC-free products that meet both soft- and resilient-surface needs. We now offer a PVC-free modular carpet backing that comes at no cost and with no minimum. We wanted to make it that simple because we wanted to convey to our customers that we are happy with either choice.

On the hard surface side, we obviously have our rubber products that serve that desire really well. But some people like the resilient aesthetic of luxury vinyl tile or plank. We offer Proxy as an alternative. We are also working on a resilient sheet that is vinyl-free. 

But those products have their consequences, just like PVC. So when we go into conversations with designers who are looking at one product or the other. If PVC-free is one of the metrics they’re using to make a decision, we want them to do that with as much accurate information as possible. 

Evaluating PVC’s Role in Sustainable Design

AR: As most designers and specifiers working in the field today know, there are many factors that play into determining the right product. David, you were one of the people who worked on Gensler’s Product Sustainability Standards, where Gensler was able to set a standard for the products you specify on your projects. I’m sure PVC was somewhere in those deliberations. Can you give us a little bit of the behind-the-scenes on how the Gensler Product Sustainability Standards approach PVC products in flooring and wallcoverings? 

David Briefel: Sure, it definitely came up. The way we created the Gensler Product Sustainability Standards, or GPS for short, was by assigning two levels of performance. There’s a Gensler Standard, which is required for all our projects in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the U.K. For a predominant list of high-impact, high-volume materials that we use on our projects, we set a list of criteria that apply. The standard is essentially a requirement that we apply to those product typologies in those markets.

We also created a separate performance level called “Market Differentiator.” The Market Differentiator is our means to signal to manufacturers that there are certain things we would love to put as a requirement as part of the standard, but maybe there’s not enough maturity in the market yet on those attributes. That’s where PVC would fall. If you start to look at products like carpet, resilient flooring, wallcoverings, and textiles, they all mention class-based avoidance in the Market Differentiator, and PVC is among the ingredients that would show up there. 

We definitely looked at including this in the standard, and there were a number of different factors that prevented us from doing that. One challenge we face is that when we start to ask for this type of transparency, we can ask for it as part of the submittal process, but it’s very difficult and problematic for us to ask our teams to review the ingredients and make determinations about what’s in or not in a product. For our teams to validate that we’ve avoided an ingredient, we need to lean heavily on third-party validation. This pushes a lot of products toward getting that third-party validation, and there’s still a lack of volume for those types of products available in the market. 

A space divided with a turquoise wallpapered pillar and a bookshelf along with floor lined with a mozaic mint and grey flooring.

One of the core methodologies for determining whether something could be included in the standard was to ensure that enough products were available, so we weren’t burdening the typical project’s cost. Another factor is that if we were going to push for alternatives to PVC and start to remove some ingredients, we want to ensure that whatever substitute is being provided meets the types of criteria and has been tested, third-party validated, and peer-reviewed to ensure that they’re not causing other types of harm. We’re not just looking at this from a human health perspective, but also from a carbon, whole-life, and social impact perspective. We want to ensure that the alternatives have also been validated from all those lenses.  

We’re hoping that by including PVC in the Market Differentiator, we’ll see more volume of these materials that have been third-party verified, that we get more and better information on some alternatives, and that it becomes commonplace and we can request them without impacting our projects.  

A Designer’s Approach to Specifying PVC Products

AR: Regardless of any specific chemistry, our hope is that all materials in the built environment are specified with care and attention to long-term consequences and impact. Annzie, as a designer who works on very critical types of projects—high-performance, high-traffic, and budget-constrained or regulation-constrained spaces—you have a specific case example of why a firm cannot set a one-size-fits-all policy here. Tell me a little bit about how you approach specifying PVC products, especially in health-care or senior living contexts.

Annzie Barfield: When thinking about the materials going into a health-care environment, the first things you consider are durability, cleanability, and safety for the end users. 

In my previous life I was in commercial and hospitality. I didn’t use a lot of vinyl flooring there. In health care you can’t put wood floors down and sometimes natural stone isn’t suitable for safety purposes. We think about those first points of, “Okay, you know, we’re in a health-care environment. What’s appropriate to put in what areas?” You’ve got areas such as waiting rooms, ORs, exam rooms, labs—and each one of those areas have different requirements that you have to think about and that users approach in different ways. 

We’ll have an OR where they want rubber flooring. Another facility may not want rubber flooring because it’s too soft and it’s difficult to move the equipment around when doing surgeries. The solution would be to put a resin flooring in but that’s too hard because the surgeons are standing for multiple hours. You really have to listen to the users and what their needs are, and really try to help educate them and hope that we make the best decision for them.

bubble couches placed facing each other on a concrete like grey flooring with a circular border print.

AR: That’s so true. Ultimately, what we want are environments that support people and help them do what they do in the best way possible. We’ve come a long way in our industry when it comes to PVC. In METROPOLIS, we published an article about this about a year ago, where we’ve eliminated chemicals of concern in PVC, while in parallel, we’ve developed alternatives. How do we navigate this situation?  

DB: I think we’ve been seeing a lot of really good progress in product availability across a number of different applications. Flooring has certainly come a long way, and I think there are a lot of new products in the last year or two that do pretty much all the things that traditional PVC-based flooring products do. I think there may still be a perception among some of our clients and subcontractors of a sort of attachment to using more traditional vinyl-based products and a reluctance to take a risk on a new product. One of the areas where we’ve seen challenges is in resilient base. We are starting with a smaller number of manufacturers that provide those products, and sometimes there’s a limited colorway that can be used.  

There are plenty of PVC-free wallcovering options and textiles. The areas where we still have a hard time competing are more in base building products, like infrastructural PVC piping or roofing products, where it’s hard for us to find a competitive alternative.  

In terms of interior finishes, there are many competitive products on the market. It will take a while for the industry to get comfortable with using them, and for us to fully evaluate them to ensure they meet our criteria, not just from a human health perspective but from a whole lifecycle perspective, including circularity and social considerations. 

ST: I think anywhere you need durability and the performance of a low-maintenance, attractive flooring product. PVC is a great option, particularly American-made products where you have confidence in the safety of the manufacturing of the resins as well as the end product. I think you should look to those for verticals like health-care, education, and institutional settings, where building standards involve changing flooring and other finishes every 10 or 15 years. You need something that’s really going to stand up over time, maintain its appearance, and also not be expensive to maintain, requiring heavy polishing and similar tasks.

AB: A lot is facilities-driven, considering how they’re going to maintain this flooring. There are alternatives out there, but many larger health-care systems don’t want to be the guinea pigs for trying a new type of flooring. It took them 10 years to figure out how to maintain this luxury vinyl tile they have. They’ve seen it installed for eight years, and it still looks great, so why would they want to switch to something different? By creating standards, many have built relationships with manufacturers for pricing so that it can work into the budget.  
 
ST: I think you make a good point. We have seen this product perform over decades. While the way it has been made has certainly gotten better, more responsible, and safer, the product has always been a high performer. It’s always been at a great price point and flexible. When we look at the PVC-free alternatives in the market today, including ours, very few, if any, have lived through their very first warranty period.

In health care, we see non-vinyl products breaking down under UVC light, which is tough on them. You’re also seeing infection protocols physically degrade the products because they can’t withstand the chemical cleaning rigor needed for infection management or prevention. There’s a lot to learn about how these new products will perform over time in all these conditions where we already have something with a proven track record.

Developing the Potential of PVC Alternatives

AR: I think it is important that those products continue to be tested and implemented in projects so that we start to gather data. This will motivate us to improve them because we want those alternatives to become viable as well. 

As you mentioned, for a variety of reasons, many organizations are beginning to determine that maybe they don’t want to use PVC in their projects. PVC is still listed on the Red List by the Living Future Institute. There’s a class-based avoidance strategy that many big property owners are using, not on the healthcare side, where it certainly would not be viable, but in other sectors.

Having all alternatives developed to the best extent possible seems to be the way forward. It feels like there are challenges for us to work on. Where do you see promise with some of these alternatives? 

Where do you see the challenges with some of the PVC alternative products that we’ve been seeing? Whether it’s entirely going to a different flooring system or about resilient flooring with PVC-free chemistry, where are some opportunities, and where do we still have challenges? 

DB: There seems to be a lot of promise in flooring. Our design teams are excited about some of the alternative PVC products they’ve seen passing durability tests. They may not have the longevity when installed on a project to prove themselves to a client at this point, but in terms of passing some initial performance testing, it appears we have products that will work in a commercial setting. In terms of aesthetics, our design teams are excited about some of the solutions and feel they have good options for projects.

Some challenges are equally around transparency. I think there are still manufacturers making PVC-free claims without being able to validate them or not following through with the level of transparency we’d like to see. 

One of the most important things we want to advocate for as a firm with global impact is promoting products with potential for real circularity. It’s great that there are PVC-free alternatives, but it’s really important to encourage manufacturers to create products that can be taken back post-consumer and reconstituted into new products, not just have a take-back program in name, but one that can be used in practice. 

AR: This is a situation where we must make every option the best it can be until we change practices or operations. Health-care spaces are not going to switch to a different cleaning regimen tomorrow, and we will not see performance demands change anytime soon. We need to take a pragmatic approach, but ultimately, our goal is spaces that do good and not harm.  
 


Listen to the full “PVC Perspectives: The Path Forward” episode on the Surround Podcast Network. This season of Deep Green is produced in partnership with Mannington Commercial.

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