GAF, North America’s largest roofing manufacturer, continues to focus on ensuring that its products and processes support the fast-developing certifications and standards in the green building community.

In November of 2013, GAF was the first—and remains the only—TPO manufacturer to complete an NSF-ISO compliant Type III Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for its EverGuard® TPO and EverGuard Extreme® roofing products. An EPD is an internationally recognized, standardized method used to analyze and communicate the life cycle assessment of environmental and human health impacts of products or services. Impacts addressed include energy use, emissions to air, soil, and water, and waste generation. In addition to this milestone in sustainability efforts, a recent independent study shows that GAF TPO is the best and longest-lasting product on the market (visit www.tporesults.com to see the performance results of all major TPO manufacturers).

Recently, GAF supplied data to and supported the efforts of PIMA (the Polyisocyanurate Insulation Manufacturers Association) to achieve third party-verified ISO-compliant Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for polyisocyanurate (polyiso) roof and wall insulations. According to PIMA, “These EPDs document that the energy-savings potential of polyiso roof and wall insulation over a typical 60-year building life span is equal to up to 47 times the initial energy required to produce, transport, install, maintain, and eventually remove and dispose of the insulation. In addition to a high return on embodied energy, the EPDs document that polyiso roof and wall insulation offer high unit R-value per inch, zero ozone depletion potential, recycled content, opportunity for reuse, and outstanding fire performance.” The PIMA polyiso roof and wall EPDs were developed based on ISO-compliant LCA studies conducted by thinkstep (formerly PE International) and are now available to architects and designers at [link]. Building materials with EPDs are now contributing to credits in green building rating systems around the world, including LEED® in North America, BREEAM in the UK, and, most recently, Green Star in Australia. They can be used in modeling building energy savings in tools like Athena Impact Estimator, which is supported by GAF. For copies of the EPDs, please go to the PIMA website at www.polyiso.org.