Owens Corning, the Toledo Ohio based manufacturer of residential and commercial building materials such as insulation and roofing shingles, has introduced Environmental Product Declarations for many of its core commercial and residential products. The publishing of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) casts Owens Corning in the favor of the U.S. Green Building Council and will make it easier for architects, builders, mechanical engineers and specifiers to meet the growing criteria of green building certifications.
An EPD is a document that is independently verified and gives interested parties transparent and comparable information about the environmental impact of products. The EPDs cover the life of a product beginning at raw material extraction to manufacture and production to disposal and end of life.
This document will focus on information about a product’s impact on areas such as ozone depletion, water pollution, global warming, ozone creation and greenhouse gas emissions. The EPD will provide consumers with a better understanding of a product’s sustainable qualities.
The growing demand for transparency in building and manufacturing products has grown in recent years and pushed companies such as Owens Corning to explore new avenues. The manufacturing leader has spoken on its desire to become a net-positive impact company and has instituted a broad sustainability initiative to accomplish this. Previously, in November of 2012 Owens Corning issued the first EPD for North America fiberglass insulation. In November of 2013 the company followed up with the first EPD for North American extruded polystyrene (XPS) foam insulation.
The company is also one of the first materials manufacturers to have its products assessed against the material health requirements of the Cradle to Cradle Certified Product Standard which allows companies to obtain material health certificates.
In 2015 Owens Corning expressed its goal of providing life-cycle assessment information on all core product offerings and with this latest announcement the company will become the first roofing manufacturer to offer EPDs on asphalt roofing shingles. The company also offers a shingle recycling pledge for consumers looking to recycle older shingles; this program is responsible for saving more than 2.9 million tons from landfills since being instituted.
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