Recycled PVC and the procurement questionnaire: what 80 per cent actually covers

Recycled PVC is the easiest sustainability improvement a card programme can make, and the easiest one to overstate in a tender.

The material itself is straightforward: the same card, the same production route, a core made largely from recycled stock. The difficulty is entirely in the language, because a claim about the core is not a claim about the card, and a procurement team that catches the difference will discount everything else in your answer.

That is worth sitting with for a moment, because it is the whole reason this article exists. Sustainability questions in a tender are not usually scored on how good the answer is. They are scored on whether the answer holds up when somebody checks it. One unsupportable sentence about a card body does more damage than three honest paragraphs do good, and the sentence is almost always written by somebody in a hurry who assumed the supplier's marketing copy was accurate.

This guide is for whoever has to fill in the questionnaire: a distributor answering on behalf of a client, a trade printer, or a programme owner writing the sustainability section themselves. It sets out what is physically true about a recycled PVC card, what you can put in writing, and what a supplier should be able to hand you to back it up.

01. Where the recycled content actually sits

A card is five layers. The recycled material is in two of them.

The overlays are virgin PVC because they have to be optically clear and take the wear, and recycled stock is not consistent enough for that. The inlay is a carrier film with the chip and antenna on it, and it sits outside the claim entirely. The full layer stack is set out separately.

Proportionally, the two cores are the bulk of the card body. In a 0.76 mm card the overlays are typically in the region of 0.05 mm each and the inlay is a thin film, so the cores carry most of the plastic. That is what makes the improvement worth doing rather than cosmetic. It is also why the accurate sentence and the exaggerated sentence sound so similar, and why so many suppliers drift from one to the other without noticing.

What recycled stock actually is

Recycled PVC sheet is compounded from reclaimed PVC that has been ground, cleaned, re-pelletised and extruded back into sheet. Because the input is not virgin resin, the sheet has more colour variation batch to batch than white virgin stock does. That is invisible once the card is printed, and it is the reason the material stays in the core rather than being used for the clear layers. Nothing about it changes the press, the lamination cycle or the punching step.

02. What changes operationally: nothing

This is the reason recycled PVC gets specified more often than wood. Same dimensions, same 0.76 mm, same lamination, same encoders, same printers, same card holders. A property can switch from standard PVC to recycled PVC between two orders and nobody at the front desk notices.

That matters more than it sounds. Most sustainability substitutions fail not because the material is worse but because they create work somewhere: a new holder, a retrained desk, a printer that has to be re-profiled, a lock supplier who wants to re-test. Recycled PVC creates none of that. The card goes into the same encoder, at the same speed, with the same result, which means the decision can be made by procurement without having to be cleared by operations.

Compare that with wood, which is a genuinely better story and does change things: thicker at 1.20 to 1.30 mm, different holders, different artwork constraints. Both are valid choices, and the guide to wooden cards covers when the visible material is worth the operational change.

The honest summary in one sentence

Recycled PVC is the improvement you make when you do not want to change anything else. That is not a small thing, and it is not a large claim either.

03. What you can say, and what you cannot

Every claim on the left of this diagram names something a third party can check. Every claim on the right either overstates the scope or cannot be verified at all.

Why biodegradable is the wrong word

PVC does not biodegrade in any meaningful timescale, recycled or not. A supplier who uses the word about a PVC card is either confused or hoping you are, and in a tender the claim is worse than saying nothing. Several European regulators have moved against unqualified degradability wording on plastics, so the risk is not only reputational.

Why the percentage needs a noun after it

Eighty per cent of what. The correct phrasing is a core with 80 per cent recycled content. The incorrect phrasing, and it is everywhere, is an 80 per cent recycled card. If you are writing a specification rather than a sentence, put the component and the percentage in the same line so it cannot be quoted out of context later.

Post industrial and post consumer are different

Post industrial recycled content is manufacturing offcut and scrap fed back into production. Post consumer is material that reached an end user and came back. Most recycled PVC card stock is post industrial. It is still a real improvement and it is a smaller claim, so say which one you mean. If a supplier will not tell you which it is, assume post industrial and write that.

04. What a questionnaire actually asks

Sustainability sections in a tender tend to ask four things about a material, and they are answerable.

• What is the recycled content, of which component, and is it post industrial or post consumer?
• Is there documentation, and who issues it?
• Does the substitution change performance or end of life handling?
• Is there a certificate from a third party, and what is its scope?

The fourth is the one where recycled PVC is weakest and it is worth being straight about it. A recycled PVC core comes with a supplier declaration, not with an independent certificate. That is a real difference from FSC chain of custody, which is issued by a third party and can be checked by anyone at search.fsc.org.

A worked answer you can adapt

Here is the shape of an answer that survives review. The card body uses a printed core with 80 per cent post industrial recycled PVC content. The clear overlays and the RFID inlay are virgin material and are not covered by that figure. The substitution does not change card dimensions, thickness, lamination, encoding or field durability, and does not change end of life handling, which remains standard plastics disposal. A supplier declaration of recycled content is available on request. No independent chain of custody certificate exists for this material; where a third party certificate is required, we offer FSC certified wood and bamboo bodies instead.

Five sentences, nothing in it that cannot be evidenced, and the weakness stated before anyone has to ask. That last move is what makes the rest credible.

05. What to ask your supplier before you promise anything

Four questions, and you want the answers in writing rather than on a call.

• Which layers carry the recycled content, and what percentage? If the answer is a figure with no component attached, it is not usable.
• Post industrial or post consumer? Both are legitimate. Only one of them is what most stock actually is.
• Will you issue a declaration on your letterhead for this order? A generic web page is not a document your client can file.
• Does the recycled stock change anything in production? The answer should be no, and it should be a confident no.

If a supplier hesitates on the first or the third, the material may still be fine but the paperwork is not, and the paperwork is what you are being asked for.

06. Recycled PVC against the alternatives

A pattern worth noticing: the three materials answer three different questions, and a tender rarely asks all three at once. Read the questionnaire before choosing the material, not after. If the scoring rubric awards points for a named third party scheme, recycled PVC will not win those points no matter how it is worded, and wood will. If the rubric asks for a material improvement with no service disruption, the reverse is true.

07. The thing worth saying that nobody says

The largest environmental effect a credential programme has is usually not the material. It is how many cards get issued and how many get thrown away.

A reusable credential that lasts three years beats a recycled one replaced every six months, by a margin no material substitution reaches. That points at durable bodies, at key fobs for staff who would otherwise get through four cards a year, and at collecting and reissuing rather than discarding.

The arithmetic is simple enough to put in a proposal. A three hundred room property that reissues two cards per stay and never recovers them gets through tens of thousands of cards a year. The same property with a recovery box at the desk and a card that survives being carried in a wallet gets through a fraction of that. No change of core material comes close to that difference, and unlike a material claim it shows up in the invoice as well as in the report.

It is a slightly awkward point for a manufacturer to make, because it means selling fewer units. It is also the true one, and a procurement team that hears it will take the rest of your answer more seriously.

08. Where Kaway fits

We manufacture for the trade and do not sell to your customers. Recycled PVC cards with an eighty per cent recycled core run on the same line, at the same thickness and with the same finishes as standard PVC, alongside PET and FSC certified wood and bamboo under licence FSC-C195226, which covers wood and bamboo cards and nothing else in the range.

Material declarations go into the delivery dossier under your brand, which is the point at which this article stops being theory and starts being a document your client files. How that works is covered separately. Minimum order is 500 units, standard production thirteen calendar days, and quotes come back the same working day. If a sample is needed to close the point in a tender, ask and we will send one.

09. Frequently asked questions

Is a recycled PVC card weaker?

No. Same thickness, same lamination, same durability in normal use. The difference is in the stock, not in the card.

Can we say our cards are 80 per cent recycled?

Say the core is. The overlays and the inlay are not, so the sentence needs the word core in it to be accurate.

Is there a certificate?

A supplier declaration of recycled content, yes. An independently issued certificate, no. That distinction matters in a tender and it is better to state it than to be asked.

Does it cost more?

A small premium over standard PVC, considerably less than wood. For most programmes it is the cheapest credible improvement available.

What about the chip and the antenna?

Outside the claim. The inlay is a separate component with its own supply chain, and no recycled content claim covers it. Anyone telling you otherwise is describing something that does not exist.

Can a recycled PVC card be printed in full colour with a photo quality finish?

Yes. Printing happens on the core surface before lamination, exactly as with virgin stock, and the clear overlay is the same material either way. Matte, gloss and frosted finishes are all available.

Can the recycled card be recycled again at end of life?

It goes into the same stream as any other PVC card, which in most places means general plastics rather than a dedicated route, and the chip and antenna complicate it. Being made from recycled material and being easy to recycle are different properties, and only the first one is true here.

Does the recycled core affect read range?

No. Read range is a function of the antenna, the chip and the reader, not of the plastic around them. See the guide to frequencies and chips for what does affect it.