This is a sponsored article by Deceuninck UK:

A new poll reveals almost half of UK homeowners would not purchase home improvement products containing plastics because of concerns about the impact plastic pollution is having on the planet.

The findings ofindependent survey conducted by the leading pollster, YouGov found that 44% of total respondents flatly rejected the prospect of buying home improvements manufactured in ‘plastic’.

A further 27% were unsure and 29% said it would not dissuade them from buying them.

Rob McGlennon. Managing Director. Deceuninck. Gloucestershire. United Kingdom.

Rob McGlennon. Managing Director. Deceuninck. Gloucestershire. United Kingdom.

At the same time, of those surveyed, 69% said that windows in their homes were currently manufactured from PVC-U.

This compared to 23% for wood, 7% aluminium, 2% other, while 14% of respondents were unsure of material used in the manufacture of the windows installed in their properties.*

When asked if they knew what the abbreviation ‘PVC’ stood for, 54% admitted that they had no idea.

“The results highlight a challenge for the PVC-U window and door industry”, said Rob McGlennon, Managing Director, Deceuninck.

“As a starting point it’s clear that for a lot of UK homeowners, plastic-building products are being tarred with the same broad brush as bottles, bags and other single-use plastics.

“The increased awareness about the impact single-use plastics are having, is great. For our industry, the fact that this survey reveals that consumers aren’t drawing a line between them and low

maintenance, long-life and fully recyclable plastic building products is a warning of things to come – unless we act now and start to communicate effectively with the homeowner.”

PVC-U is a highly recyclable building material with a Building Research Establishment Green Guide to Specification A and A+ rating for domestic and commercial applications.

This is founded on a recognised Reference Service Life of at least 35-years and that PVC-U can be recycled up to 10 times without impacting on performance.

Deceuninck has invested more the €15million in support of PVC-U recycling in one of the world’s most advanced recycling and compounding facilities.

This gives it the capability to reprocess up to 45,000 tonnes of post-consumer and post-manufacturing PVC-U per year – the equivalent of preventing 3million windows from going to landfill annually.

The use of recycled material also delivers a reduction in CO2 emissions of 90,000 tonnes compared to virgin feedstocks as well as a 90% energy saving.

Rob continued: “We’re not alone, a number of other systems companies have also invested. That, however, amounts to nothing, if we don’t communicate what we’re doing to the end-user.”

The Deceuninck commissioned study also found that 63% of UK homeowners surveyed said that they would be more likely to purchase home improvements, which they saw as being more ‘sustainable’** while 38% of said that they would be prepared to pay more for them.

“As we’ve highlighted, the survey isn’t all stick – there’s a lot of carrot there too. People will choose products which they see as more sustainable over those that they don’t, and are prepared to pay more for them”, continued Rob.

“It is, however, another wake-up call for the PVC-U window and door industry and anyone who works within its supply chain.”

For more information about Deceuninck’s product and service offer please call 01249 816 969, email deceuninck.ltd@deceuninck.com or visit www.deceuninck.co.uk.

*Total adds up to more than 100% as some respondents stated that more than one window and door material type was installed in their properties.

**Sustainability is defined for the purpose of the questionnaire as how much energy a product or service uses in manufacturing or delivery, or if it includes recycled material or can be recycled.

To get weekly updates from DGB sent to your inbox, enter your email address in the space below to subscribe:

By subscribing you agree to DGB sending you weekly email updates with all published content on this website, as well as any major updates to the services being run on DGB. Your data is never passed on to third parties or used by external advertising companies. Your data is protected and stored on secure servers run by Fivenines UK Ltd.