Sustainability Committee Continues to Broaden Its Reach

During last week’s Sustainability Committee meeting, VSI Consultant, Cara Vought of Sustainable Solutions, provided a presentation which included a preliminary review of vinyl siding’s Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data collected from members over the last few months.

Most data is now collected for vinyl siding, insulated vinyl siding and polypropylene siding. Initial results are favorable in that there have been environmental impact improvements from the previous cycle. Committee members will have a full report to review in December and next data can move forward for submission into the Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) software. Steps after this include the publication of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) in a new form.

During the meeting, it was noted it would be interesting to see trends in production over the last five years to see how the environmental impacts have changed relative to production. Moving forward, the industry will focus more on embodied carbon. VSI industrywide EPDs will then be published through an embodied carbon software based on LCI.

Recycling Coalition Update

As you may have read in previous newsletters, the Northeast Ohio Vinyl Siding Recycling Coalition launched in September and has already met some successes.

The Coalition is also faced with a few challenges with containers, costs and collection sites. As a result, there have been great marketing and communications opportunities with the Coalition including a project presentation before the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and media placement in industry trade publications.

VSI Benchmarking Survey

Finally, the Sustainability Committee has provided a recommendation to add sustainability-related questions to the annual VSI Benchmarking Survey. These new questions have been forwarded by the Committee to VSI’s Board of Directors and focus on energy use, water use and recycling.