What happens to old uPVC windows?

What's in an old window

An old uPVC window is rigid PVC profile, sealed-unit glass, rubber gaskets, steel reinforcement and metal hardware. Each of those has a buyer once it's separated. We do the separating, so there's no reason to pay landfill prices to bury material a profile extruder will buy back.

Step one: collection and arrival at the hub

We work from five hubs (Chester, Wigan, Haslingden, Stoke-on-Trent and Rotherham), so most loads in the North West, Liverpool, North Wales, the Midlands and Yorkshire are back at a yard within an hour or two of pickup.

On arrival the load is weighed, logged against the electronic waste transfer note (eWTN) and tipped into a holding bay by source. Frames, doors, conservatory roof bars, fascias and clean offcuts each take a slightly different path through the line. Clean offcuts and redundant bar lengths skip the shredder: they are granulated, colour sorted and extruded into new products. Mixed loads are sorted by hand first, and that sorting decides whether a load earns a rebate or gets downgraded. White-and-foil frames are kept apart from white-only stock because the recycled material goes to a different market.

Step two: shredding

The deglazed frames go into the shredder. Industrial shears reduce a full casement frame to coarse chunks in seconds, including the steel reinforcement bar that runs through most outerframes and sashes. Handles, hinges, locking gear and friction stays go through with it.

The glass has already come out on site before collection, by the installer or by us. If you have the kit and the time to deglaze yourself, the frames load tighter and may improve the rate.

Step three: taking out the metal

Magnets pull the steel reinforcement and hardware out of the shredded chunks. Eddy-current separation then catches the non-ferrous metal (handle bodies, gearing) that the magnets miss. The glass taken out on site before collection goes to our glass recycling stream. There's more on the glass side in sealed unit recycling.

Step four: granulating

With the metal out, the uPVC goes through a granulator, which takes it down to fingernail-sized flakes. There are still bits of gasket rubber, other plastics and the odd lump of silicone mixed in at this point.

Step five: final separation and micronising

Next the rubber and other plastics come out:

• Air and float-sink separation splits the lighter rubber and gasket bits from the heavier PVC. Any glass fines left settle out here too.
• Optical sorting on high-grade lines uses cameras and near-infrared sensors to reject any non-PVC plastic that's slipped through (polycarbonate from conservatory panels, ABS trim, the odd bit of acrylic).

The clean PVC chip, sometimes already split by colour, is then micronised (ground to a fine powder) ready to go into the core of new window profiles. White is the volume product. Foiled, woodgrain and coloured stock run in their own batches because mixed colour cuts the value.

Who buys the recycled uPVC

Recycled PVC has an established market in the UK and Europe. Most of it goes into one of four products.

New window profiles

UK and European profile manufacturers extrude new profile with a recycled core between virgin-PVC outer skins. It performs the same as all-virgin profile, has a lower carbon footprint, and the core can have come from a frame fitted thirty years ago, which is what closed-loop means. More in closed-loop window recycling.

Garden, fencing and outdoor products

Fence posts, fence panels, decking, pipe lagging, garden edging and cable trunking don't need cosmetic colour control, so they take mixed-colour and lower-grade output.

Construction products

Construction buys recycled PVC in volume for soffits, fascia board, drainage, ducting, conduit and flooring underlay. These products are buried, painted or covered, so recycled content doesn't matter to the spec.

Sheet and trim

Foamed PVC sheet, signage board and trim profiles are routinely made from reclaim. The foam PVC board at the builders' merchant may well have been a window frame.

Where the steel, glass and gaskets go

Nothing on a window is wasted if it's separated.

• Steel reinforcement goes to UK steel reprocessors for re-melt.
• Sealed-unit glass: clean float glass goes back into UK cullet for new flat or container glass. Contaminated or coated glass goes into glass fibre, mineral wool, abrasive media or aggregate.
• Hardware: brass and zinc-alloy handles, locking gear and hinge bodies go to non-ferrous scrap.
• Gaskets and rubber: EPDM and silicone become rubber crumb for surfacing, matting and infill.

Landfill and the waste hierarchy

Under the Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011, anyone producing or handling waste has a legal duty to apply the waste hierarchy: prevent first, then re-use, recycle, recover, and dispose only as a last resort. Burying a uPVC frame when a profile extruder will buy the recycled PVC is the bottom rung, and once you add landfill tax it's also the most expensive.

uPVC doesn't biodegrade, so a frame put into landfill in 1995 is still a frame. Recycling routes for rigid PVC have run at industrial scale for years through the BPF's Recovinyl scheme and the wider VinylPlus commitment, and the volumes grow every year.

Recycling also costs less. A clean offcut load earns a rebate and a frame load is collected free, while a landfill skip costs you tipping fees and tax. That's why the fabricators and installers we work with stopped sending uPVC to general waste years ago. More in recycling fabricator offcuts.

Preparing your load

If you're a fabricator with clean offcuts, keep them apart from frames and other waste. All colours can go in the same cage. Clean offcuts, bar lengths and mis-measures earn a rebate.

If you're an installer pulling old frames off a job, the glass has to come out before collection, but we can do that on site for you. There's no need to sort by colour, and there's no minimum tonnage. Stack them on the van or in a cage and we'll do the rest at the hub. The eWTN is emailed to you within 24 hours of collection.

If you're a demolition contractor or a council framework manager pulling volume off housing stock, we'll agree container sizes and a collection schedule with you.

None of the windows we collect go to landfill. Get a quote or email us photos and we'll route the load to the nearest hub.