ODS Business Services, one of Europe’s largest producers of CDs and DVDs, based in London, UK, has produced a recyclable DVD. The EcoDisc is composed of a single layer, using half the polycarbonate of regular DVDs and requiring no bonding resins.

Most DVD players accept discs that are 1.2mm thick. This requires manufacturers to bond together two 0.6mm polycarbonate substrates, one containing the data and the other which is blank. The resin used is a non-biodegradable or recyclable modified acrylate, containing photo initiators triggered by UV light. The EcoDisc, however, is composed of a single layer, overcoming the need for resin.

‘The trick with the EcoDisc is that, in order to have the same playability of a standard 1.2mm disc, we inject blobs of polycarbonate on the surface and design the centre ring so it protrudes from the underside,’ says Ray Wheeler, Managing Director of ODS. ‘By doing this, the players read the data in the same way as they would a standard 1.2mm disc.’

The EcoDisc contains the same amount of data as a standard DVD5 (which has a capacity of around 4.7Gb – roughly two hours of film footage), and ODS hopes to release a 5.4Gb version within the next six months.

The disc can be melted with CDs and reused for injection moulded products such as lightbulbs. ODS is in talks with recycling companies to include its discs in their operations, and has received interest from production studios and UK newspapers who want to offer recyclable DVDs in their weekly give-aways.