Vinyl Sustainability Council

Ugh. I am with you. Greenwashing. Toxic plastic is toxic plastic no matter how many times it’s recycled. And then if a program is created to “help” recycle the vinyl, doesn’t that just encourage more use of new vinyl cladding (since it can be recycled)? Also if the community sees that the sustainability org is associating w/ vinyl, then there is risk that they will think all vinyl is okay. Not worth the association. Kristen Fritsch AIA LEED AP BD+C WELL AP Senior Associate Sustainability Coordinator ELKUS MANFREDI ARCHITECTS [tel] 617.695.7954 [email] kfritsch@elkus-manfredi.com From: T

Yeah, I completely agree with you and Kristen, it's greenwashing.  We need to reduce the number places we use plastic (esp PVC), to the very few where we have no other good options.  "Recycling" is also not a clean process.  If it was perfectly (or almost) clean, or perfectly "contianed", and it was a place to "sequester" plastic where it can do no harm thats one thing.  But I dont know if that exists and it probably wont be siding. And to set that up, would be very difficult to do without encouraging more extraction/creation of new material. 

LMN has a no-vinyl policy, for several reasons. Parsons Healthy Materials Lab lays out many of them: https://healthymaterialslab.org/learning-hub/ceh-exposing-luxury-vinyl-flooring https://healthymaterialslab.org/blog/vinyl-flooring-chemical-linked-to-high-blood-pressure-during-pregnancy https://healthymaterialslab.org/material-collections/green-flooring Vinyl is not, and has no pathway that I've seen to become, a sustainable material. They have spent highly on marketing, though. While it is lower embodied carbon in the short term compared to some other materials, it's toxicity, including additives, makes it undesirable. While some materials have pros and cons that are worth discussing, vinyl has enough cons to eliminate it from reasonable consideration where alternatives exist. But it is ubiquitous in all sectors and difficult to completely eliminate. I agree that it would be lending your credibility to an organization that is desperate for it and is not worthy of it. I reviewed the VSC's plans quickly. Their 2025 goal is to recycle around 1% of US national sales (80,000 tons out of 7.5M sold). -Kjell Kjell Anderson FAIA, LEED Fellow Principal, Director of Sustainable Design LMN Architects lmnarchitects.com M 206 812 6546 O 206 682 3460 S Linkedin | X | Instagram

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I will pile on here and agree with everything so far. I dug into "Vantage Vinyl" from the Sustainability Council last week after it was promoted by a flooring manufacturer. Pure greenwashing. The biggest thing they can even attempt to claim is a focus on recycling, which is problematic as others have pointed out. But, also, when you dig into their website they even acknowledge that post-consumer recycling (13% of total recycling, so they say) has remained flat since 2016. So, during all this time they've been promoting it they've failed to make it happen. When I hear the word sustainability associated with PVC, I just think "Clean Coal" and move on.

maybe a little off topic, but somewhat pertinent...UL recently created a program that validates recycled content claims. The UL 2809 Environmental Claim Validation Procedure for Recycled Content.  ISO 14021 establishes how to determined the recycled content but is self declared.  Third party ratings systems might start to move past ISO 14021 and require third party validation...and/or our spec writers might require 3rd party validation on all recycled content claims.