Leading British ventilation manufacturer Vent-Axia is celebrating Global Recycling Day, which takes place on 18 March 2026. Reinforcing its position at the forefront of sustainable manufacturing, Vent-Axia continues to drive innovation in reducing environmental impact, most notably through its pioneering transition from virgin to recycled plastics across its product range. This commitment was recognised in September 2025 when Vent-Axia was named Best Ventilation Brand of the Year at the Electrical Wholesaler Awards, with judges impressed by the company’s groundbreaking initiative to transition from virgin to recycled plastic in its manufacturing, alongside its wider sustainability commitments that are helping lead the industry.
Vent-Axia is committed to reducing its environmental impact and its strategy focuses on three pillars: Product – Engineer Sustainable Solutions; Planet – Improve Environmental Performance; and People – Connect People Together. Recycling plays a core role in this vision. Vent-Axia’s Group’s sustainability targets include reaching 75% of sales revenue from low-carbon products and for 90% of the plastic it uses in its own manufacturing to be from recycled sources.
Vent-Axia has led a groundbreaking shift transitioning from virgin to recycled plastic in its manufacturing. Overcoming industry challenges, the company invested heavily in R&D, developed strong supplier partnerships, and created an industry-first materials database for recycled plastics, facilitating third-party product certification. These achievements have already been recognised with Vent-Axia winning the ‘Low Carbon Impact Award: Commercial or Industrial’ at the 2024 H&V News Awards and the BEAMA Net Zero Collaboration Award for its partnership with AO, transforming recycled fridge plastic into ventilation products.
Vent-Axia Lo-Carbon PoziDry Pro. Image © Vent-Axia
“Global Recycling Day provides an important opportunity to highlight the role our industry must play in reducing environmental impact. At Vent-Axia, our transition from virgin to recycled plastics is not just an innovation milestone, but a fundamental shift in how we design and manufacture products for a low-carbon future. By embedding circular economy principles into our processes and continuing to invest in sustainable materials, we are helping customers reduce their carbon footprint while driving long-term change across the ventilation sector,” said Joe Brawn, Product and Marketing Director at Vent-Axia.
As part of its commitment to sustainability, Vent-Axia recognised that transitioning to recycled plastic was key for reducing carbon emissions and promoting circular economy principles. As the first ventilation company to set such ambitious targets for using recycled plastic in its manufacturing, Vent-Axia initially faced a challenge since test houses would not certify products made from recycled material due to recycled plastic content variations and the absence of materials data. Vent-Axia paved the way by batch-testing recycled plastics in its own labs, creating a pioneering materials database to share with test houses, enabling product certification and third-party accreditation. This work has strengthened the company’s materials expertise and helped lead the ventilation sector. Manufacturing with recycled plastic reduces a product’s carbon emissions by up to 40%.
It was vital to collaborate with a trusted recycler of plastics to achieve this transformation to ensure the quality, consistency, and volume Vent-Axia needed, which was where AO, the UK’s most trusted electricals retailer, stepped in. AO has supplied recycled High Impact Polystyrene (HIPS) and ABS from fridges it collects and recycles.
Sustainability has always been central to Vent-Axia’s product innovation. A wide range of the company’s products are now manufactured using recycled material 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 transformation to using recycled materials has now expanded to other 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.
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 on the road to net zero, 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. The move to recycled plastic also further improves the environmental credentials of the product for housebuilders and homeowners.
PIV from Vent-Axia. Image © Vent-Axia
Vent-Axia has rolled out a raft of 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. 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.
Another 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.
Global Recycling Day is organised by The Global Recycling Foundation. Recycling is a key part of the circular economy, helping to protect natural resources. Each year the ‘Seventh Resource’ (recyclables) saves 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.
To find out more about Global Recycling Day visit: www.globalrecyclingday.com. If you would like to learn more about Vent-Axia’s drive towards sustainability, visit www.vent-axia.com/about-us/sustainable.
For further information on all products and services offered by Vent-Axia telephone (0)344 856 0590 or visit www.vent-axia.com.
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