Over 60 companies in the PVC supply chain – from salt to the manufacturing of raw materials, and from processing to recycling – support the goals of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft PVC und Umwelt (AGPU) through their membership. As a service partner, the AGPU advises its member companies on the environment, sustainable development, and consumer protection. It creates dialogue with decision-makers from politics, trade, the economy, and NGOs. The AGPU gathers and consolidates information from the fields just mentioned and prepares it for member companies and external decisionmakers for specific target groups. It combines and represents the interests of the German PVC branch towards organisations from this industry in Germany and in Brussels. Its goal is to present PVC objectively to decision-makers and thereby to bolster confidence with target groups.For precisely this reason, the global economic crisis should not have a negative effect on this branch. It is only together with societal groups that PVC can reach its potential, for example, in the growing markets for the energy-efficient renovation of buildings, the infrastructure of digital networks, or communal lifelines of water and energy. In the future, the power of communication for PVC will be generated beyond the “basic work” of the AGPU by top services from the service company of the AGPU: the communication agency PVCplus. It professionally acquires and implements projects commissioned by companies and associations. The goal is to make communication know-how permanently and efficiently available to the PVC network as an indispensable customised service. For this reason, an expert in international service marketing has recently joined the PVCplus team.In the process, the high recognition which services by the AGPU and PVCplus already enjoy in Germany and internationally is a great advantage – in the PVC branch and with external experts. The membership of renowned companies such as ac-Folien, Exxon, Hornschuch, Reagens and Schüco is proof of this.