How to Use PVA in a Sentence

PVA

abbreviation or noun
  • The pods—used for laundry as well—are wrapped in a type of plastic called polyvinyl alcohol, or PVA.
    — Matt Fuchs, Time, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Rolsky agrees with many others that these PVA remnants are too dissolved to define them as microplastics—but for him, that’s precisely the problem.
    — Matt Fuchs, Time, 29 Sep. 2025
  • The thin wrapping portion of the pod, which contains the liquid detergent, is made from PVA, a dissolvable form of plastic also known as polyvinyl alcohol.
    — Maria Sabella, Better Homes & Gardens, 7 Nov. 2025
  • Although the synthetic substance is not fully biodegradable and doesn't simply disappear in its entirety, a large percentage of the PVA makeup is biodegradable.
    — Maria Sabella, Better Homes & Gardens, 7 Nov. 2025
  • Powder detergents may increase friction during washing, while many pods and detergent sheets contain polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), a dissolvable plastic that may not fully break down in wastewater systems.
    — Ryan Brennan may 11, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 11 May 2026
  • However, that doesn’t mean the PVA has disappeared, says Sherri Mason, a chemist and plastics pollution researcher at Gannon University.
    — Matt Fuchs, Time, 29 Sep. 2025
  • The Great Escape has announced a raft of new names for its 2026 edition, including Bella Kay, Bimini, PVA, Charlotte Plank and more.
    — Thomas Smith, Billboard, 31 Mar. 2026
  • More than a million of Beijing’s troops – the People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) – rushed into Korea and by early winter had the US and UN forces on the run.
    — Gawon Bae, CNN Money, 25 Dec. 2025
  • Charles Rolsky, executive director and senior research scientist at the Shaw Institute, a nonprofit focusing on the links between environmental and human health, says that many studies, including his own, suggest PVA can pass through wastewater treatment without completely degrading.
    — Matt Fuchs, Time, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Gel electrolyte could revolutionize EV batteries The material, called An-PVA-CN gel polymer electrolyte (GPE), can attack the oxygen problem at the source, rather than dealing with the damage afterward.
    — Christopher McFadden, Interesting Engineering, 16 Nov. 2025
  • Graduate students in Allen’s group are now engineering sensors and even batteries from polymers such as poly(lactic co-glycolic) acid (PLGA), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), and polycaprolactone (PCL), the same materials used in dissolvable surgical sutures.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 27 Nov. 2018
  • That partnership was celebrated countrywide in-store on International Women’s Day 2025, and in October, Lancôme is to sponsor PVA’s Women Veterans Empowerment Retreat.
    — Jennifer Weil, Footwear News, 3 Sep. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'PVA.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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