The materials that make up our products were at the heart of many discussions at ILFI’s Living Product Expo last week in Pittsburgh. Topics swirled around regenerative tech and other new material technologies. There were heated debates on controversial materials and substances, material health and safety, and re-examination and exploration of the meaning of “biophilic” and “natural” materials.
PVC is one of the most persistent ugly step-sisters in the building products industry, and the short answer for why it continues to be a leading material in many applications is its cost/performance ratio. It costs less and performs better than more sustainable options, and the market (in our world, builders, architects, and interior designers) aren’t demanding better, safer alternatives.
But ILFI chose to open Pandora’s box at its Living Product Expo by including a seminar called, “Can PVC be a ‘Green’ Product?: The Evolving Story of Polyvinyl Chloride” in its programming for the Living Product Expo.
The only sensible answer to the seminar’s title question is no – PVC achieves very few green chemistry principles, and its detrimental effects to both human and environmental health and safety have been extremely well-documented for decades. We presume that ILFI chose to include this seminar to rally the troops and pinpoint the underlying issues beneath PVC production and sales.
Below are the key takeaways from the seminar, led by – Dhruv Raina, Director, Sustainability, Tarkett;Jim Vallette, Research Director, Healthy Building Network;Lisa Britton, Director of Sales & Marketing, Industrial Louvers, Inc.; and Mary Dickinson, Regional Sustainable Design Leader, Perkins+Will.
>As much as we all know and acknowledge the indisputable evidence of problems with PVC – the toxic chemicals in it contribute to cancer, it’s not biodegradable and so presents serious end-of-lifecycle issues, its production process contains toxic chemicals like chlorine and contributes a significant amount of air and water pollution and solid waste – manufacturers in the building products industry are still not taking a stand across the board to simply stop producing these products.
>Profits are the primary driver of manufacturers’ resistance to stop. PVC is cheaper to produce than more sustainable options, and interior designers and clients are not applying enough pressure on manufacturers to provoke a change in behavior across all their product lines.
Several key factors are driving the low cost of PVC: many states around the Gulf Coast have laws that are friendly to deregulation, prevalence of fracking, and the U.S.’s persistent use of asbestos diaphragms. Although standards like Cradle-to-Cradle and Declare list PVC as a banned chemical, budget constraints still rule decision-making in many projects.
>Perkins+Will created and maintains a “Mindful Materials” library with 1000+ products reviewed for their ingredients. Ms. Dickinson, of Perkins+Will, said that every firm should be pursuing a major shift in mindset, asking the questions, “Where do we stand in this market of materials? Are we okay with this being what our materials are made of? If not, what are we going to do about it?”
“We have to start specifying these materials,” said Ms. Dickinson. “We need to shift the conversation from, ‘What toxins have you removed?’ to ‘What Living Products do you have?’”
Ideally, designers would refuse to work with PVC materials, and manufacturers would stop producing and selling them, and put more resources into developing alternatives. But, manufacturers who have developed PVC-free products need to experience positive, bottom-line feedback from the markets – they need designers to actually specify the PVC-free stuff in order to make producing it financially viable. Right now, that cannot be guaranteed.
Many designers feel like brokers, an in-between trying to corral the best solution. Ms. Dickinson offered a few solutions: “When proposing an alternative to a client and they’re hesitant, go to the manufacturer and ask them if they will do a test area for the project. Or, if you’re working on multiple projects for a client and time or budget constraints are holding them back, ask if you can move forward with exploring the alternative product for the next project.”
>In addition to the need for stronger affirmation from the A&D community, all parties need to embrace a major shift in how we discuss PVC and any other material health topic. Rather than limiting the conversation to the evils of PVC, both A&D and manufacturers need to expand their language to develop an approach to materials that is more holistic.
“The goal should never be strictly ‘PVC-free’,” said Mikhail Davis, session attendee and Director of Restorative Enterprise at Interface. “The goal should be to develop a better palette of materials to work with. There are many other materials besides PVC that are detrimental to human and environmental health.”
“The cost reward of PVC is positive, we get it – it’s cheap,” noted one session attendee in the Q&A portion. “But what are the actual benefits of PVC as a material? We need to change the language to put everything into context. There are some positive material attributes that we can pull from PVC and use to develop new alternatives.”
>There are significant challenges to developing and marketing safer alternatives to PVC. As someone who’s been through the process, panelist member LisaBritton, Director of Sales & Marketing, Industrial Louvers, Inc., ticked off just a few.
On the development side, the codes and testing practices were all built around PVC-specific information, so the testing environment is not as conducive to alternatives. Developers are also trying to find the right chemistry for alternatives that would meet performance and durability standards, but PVC still takes the cake. Health data for alternatives is also very limited. “It’s very difficult to even figure out if you’re using any regrettable materials.” And finally, the tooling and machinery is not interchangeable – PVC can be extruded on really primitive machines compared to other materials.
On the marketing side, a lack of education and resources, as well as threats and push-back from industries present roadblocks. And the sales cycle is long, but investors are not patient.
>How can we get contractors involved? Because contractors work on such tiny profit margins, they’re inherently risk-averse, making it more difficult to engage with them. More education and engagement with this group must happen, but no clear solutions to this challenge were presented at the seminar.
Developing PVC-free alternatives and expanding our discussion of harmful materials and more holistic healthy material is an important goal. Progress is slow, but understandably so. The challenges to creating healthier products are great.
