CFFA touts vinyl roofing recyclability

The Vinyl Roofing Division of the Cleveland-based Chemical Fabrics & Film Association (CFFA) says polyvinyl chloride (PVC) roofing is “the only commercial roofing material that is being recycled, at the end of decades of service life, into the feedstock to make new roofing membranes.”

PVC has an inherent advantage over many other roofing materials when it comes to recycling, the group says, adding that "as a thermoplastic, it can readily be heated and reprocessed without loss of key physical properties."

Thus, it has long been an industry best practice to reintroduce production trimmings and scrap as raw materials into vinyl roofing membrane manufacturing processes. In 2021, the member manufacturers of CFFA Vinyl Roofing Division recycled a combined 10,250 tons of preconsumer material. End-of-life materials may be able to reach a similar outcome.

A new white paper covering the topic, “Avoiding the Landfill: The Recycling of PVC Roof Membranes,” is available for download on the CFFA website. Focusing on postconsumer recycling, the paper examines the evolution and current state of commercial PVC roof membranes as a sustainable building product at the end of its service life, the group says.

“Skyrocketing raw material costs, higher landfill tipping fees, legislation to restrict disposal of construction materials, and an architectural community that demands the lightest environmental footprint that can be achieved, have led to the mainstreaming of postconsumer recycling and a vision of the day when specifiers will routinely call for postconsumer content in a roof membrane,” CFFA says.

In 2021, some participating manufacturers of CFFA’s Vinyl Roofing Division recycled a combined 380 tons of membranes at the end of their service lives. These were reprocessed into either new PVC roofing membranes (closed loop recycling) or other non-roofing products such as flooring, which CFFA calls open-loop recycling.