The Vinyl Sustainability Council (VSC) has updated its verification program for companies participating in the +Vantage Vinyl initiative, which aims to demonstrate manufacturers' progress toward addressing environmental issues.
Created in 2016, the VSC is a partner of the Washington-based Vinyl Institute trade group. The council oversees the +Vantage Vinyl effort to meet customer demand for responsibly sourced products and industry goals to reduce environmental footprints.
About 70 percent of PVC resin goes into the built world so VSC members include roofing, decking, siding, window, fencing and pipe extruders in addition to producers of resins and additives.
VSC members are committed to making U.S. PVC production more sustainable as well as providing transparency and credentialing required to strengthen consumer faith in vinyl products, according to VSC Executive Director Jay Thomas.
Starting in January 2022, companies going through the +Vantage Vinyl verification process will have to demonstrate compliance with 27 guiding principles that align with environmental, social and governance (ESG) pillars, Thomas said in an email.
The principles set the direction for what companies should strive to achieve, guiding them to, among other things, document their sourcing procurement policy; use sustainability as a criteria when evaluating research and development projects or capital projects; disclose information on additives used in PVC products to stakeholders upon request; and reduce end-product embodied carbon.
Thomas said the list of guiding principles positions the VSC to build on its progress. He has two decades of experience in the vinyl industry, including as a Green Building Initiative board member.
"2021 was a seminal year for the program," Thomas said. "The updated +Vantage Vinyl verification scheme sets the groundwork for measuring, reporting and improving in a transparent way. This is a big step forward and very important to the future success of the program."
The council also continues to chip away at an industry goal to increase post-consumer PVC recycling by 10 percent by 2025, which is an increase of about 16 million pounds over a 2016 baseline, Thomas said.
"However, the real strategy for driving progress isn't through setting industry goals as much as driving improvement at the company level by measuring current performance and driving improvements year-after-year," Thomas explained.
Overall, the council's mission remains the same: Connecting the vinyl value chain to continuously improve the sustainability of the industry.
"But our vision is evolving with societal demands," Thomas said. "We are looking past individual company verification to supply chain verification and evolving to offer customers a way to verify the sustainability of the entire supply chain of a product."
Member organizations that meet the published standards for the +Vantage Vinyl program can use a trademark and brand to show their verification of the sustainability of the entire value chain.
The initiative picked up seven new members in 2021, bringing total membership to 51, with the addition of CertainTeed Corp., Barrette Outdoor Living, Duro-Last Inc., Construction & Demolition Recycling Association, Lakeland Polymers LLC, Lastique International and Resin Technology LLC.
Thomas said other companies need to "join us for the journey" to maintain momentum and have a more significant impact.
He compares the Vantage Vinyl effort to an organic food label providing the consumer with a certain level of assurance that the food was produced according to a set of healthy growing practices. +Vantage Vinyl verification sets about to accomplish the same objective.
"It is helpful to provide a differentiator between product certifications, which most people are familiar with, and verifying the sustainable operations of a company, which is the role of +Vantage Vinyl," Thomas said.
There is a renewed sense of urgency to bring the entire industry along the continuous improvement journey and to share successes, he added.
"The PVC industry is one of the most heavily regulated and scrutinized. As a result, its improvement in environmental performance is impressive," Thomas said. "However, we have done a poor job telling our story. +Vantage Vinyl provides us with the platform to communicate our sustainability program in a transparent way to gain credibility and build a brand that stands for sustainable performance.
The new verification period begins in January 2022.
While the No. 1 aim is to grow the program in terms of membership, recognition and acceptance, the council also wants to make more progress on post-consumer PVC recycling by transitioning a roofing pilot program to a national program.
The roofing pilot program is in collaboration with the Vinyl Roofing Division of the CFFA.
"The member companies worked throughout 2021 to demonstrate the feasibility of post-consumer roof recycling, identify hurdles to expanding recycling and build a business case for investment needed to expand the practice of post-consumer roof recycling," Thomas said.
Along those lines, earlier this year, the council recognized Canton, Mass.-based Sika Sarnafil, a subsidiary of Sika AG, for using recycled content in two brands of its single-ply roofing products. The company is one of 10 currently verified by GreenCircle Certified, an independent third party, to meet +Vantage Vinyl standards.
Sika is leading by example, according to Stanley Graveline, senior vice president of technical services and sustainability at Sika Sarnafil.
"As early adopters of +Vantage Vinyl, we think this is a great step forward for the vinyl industry. +Vantage Vinyl sets the industry standard for sustainable operations and communicates our commitment to our customers," Graveline said in an email.
The VSC put Sika Sarnafil in the spotlight for its role in repairing the 30-year-old roof of the Rogers Centre in Toronto after massive ice chunks fell from neighboring office towers and caused damage. The manufacturer's ability to recycle the existing 460,000-square foot PVC roof into new products was a driving factor in the building owner's decisions to replace it.
At the time, Thomas said, "Sika Sarnafil's story speaks to the durability and resilience of PVC, which in itself epitomizes sustainability. Having a roof that continues to perform over decades and in extreme temperatures is notable, and their submission highlights that recycled content is long-lasting and can be used in such applications."
The council also is working to launch a new pilot program with the Vinyl Siding Institute trade group. Member companies built the infrastructure for a successful pilot program in Northeast Ohio that brings together siding manufacturers, contractors, distributors, construction and demolition facilities, recyclers and local government. The program began in September and continues through summer of 2022.
"The objectives of the program are to demonstrate feasibility, learn the hurdles to implementation and build a robust program that can be rolled out to other parts of the country," Thomas said.
The VSC also is beginning the process of developing the industry's decarbonatization roadmap.
For years, the focus on a building's contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been on consumption of energy for lighting, heating, cooling and hot water. Embodied carbon is determined by looking at GHG emissions associated with construction projects from raw material extraction to transportation, manufacturing and installation. Operational and end-of-life emissions associated with those materials are considered, too.
"A decarbonization roadmap will help the industry understand where the opportunities lie, and potential new technologies to address carbon reductions," Thomas said. "Water and waste remain key focus areas and are measured during the +Vantage Vinyl verification process."
Thomas said there are two schools of thought on sustainability goals: one a big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG) that is inspirational but doesn't have a clear plan and strategy to achieve while the other is an aspirational goal that drives progress with a clear plan and strategy.
The latter applies to the VSC, Thomas said.
"As an industry association with limited span of control over the industry, this is where we fall," Thomas said of the group's aspirational goals.
VSC's partner, the Vinyl Institute, recently published a Megatrends Report to identify trends with the potential to disrupt and transform the vinyl industry over the next decade.
The 34-page report, which is based on interviews, research and surveys of the association's members and leading experts, also supports strategic planning efforts and ESG reporting activities.
"In a year of dealing with short-term problems like supply chain disruptions, it is critical to also look toward the horizon," VI President and CEO Ned Monroe said in a news release. "Our Megatrends Report is a compilation of what we are anticipating for the industry in the next 10 years. It identifies opportunities for members of the vinyl value chain to collaborate on solutions that can advance our industry and address potential threats."
The report describes the August 2021 warning issued by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change as dire and the goal to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 as a best-case scenario that still results in more severe heat, more flooding and more sea rise that will threaten lives and livelihoods.
In the report, the trade group says the industry should consider taking a leadership position in developing a decarbonization strategy to drive preference for vinyl products that can meet demand for resilient construction materials. It points to use of PVC pipe and conduit as a cost-effective solution for outdoor and indoor irrigation to improve food security and for electrification infrastructure to minimize the cost impact of the transition to cleaner energy.
Industry members also should leverage smart city trends, the report says, to drive procurement policies that protect vinyl products, such as cabling infrastructure, perishable food packaging, medical products and indoor irrigation.
In addition, by making it easier to track and trace products — from raw materials and ingredients, including recycled content, through order fulfillment and delivery — a company can build trust for itself and the industry, the report says.
To allow the market to do more with less material, the industry should accelerate research on alternative, renewable, and regenerative feedstocks, processes, and energy sources, such as more stable PVC molecules and compounds that maximize recycled content, the report adds.
In the next 10 years, the vinyl industry also needs to look at preparing for more frequent and powerful storms that will put production facilities at risk with more frequent and longer disruptions to plant operations and supply chains.
The report also tells companies to expect the trend toward single-hypothesis studies targeting the presence of chemical substances to continue and says it could lead to extra-regulatory standards and certifications.
"The era of the responsible brand is here, and business as usual will no longer cut it," the report says. "COVID-19 didn't create inequality, but it exposed economic and health disparities. Social networks didn't create harassment and discrimination, but they allowed people to share their stories, compare notes, and understand the systemic nature of many of the issues undergirding the U.S. and global economies. The result is that shareholder value will increasingly be but one metric of corporate worth as investors and consumers alike demand and reward transparency around business values and social good."
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