Is Vinyl Green?

It’s kind of fun to ask that question to persons of various industry affiliation. You never get the same answers (or justification /rationalization) twice. It’s a question that evokes reactions ranging from anger to befuddlement to incredulity at your stupidity.

A few years ago, a U.S. Green Building Council’s PVC Task Force tried to take on the issue to determine the appropriateness of vinyl for LEED. After two years of study, the task force issued a report in December of 2004 that recommended against a LEED credit eliminating vinyl from otherwise green buildings because it said it could find no evidence that vinyl was any worse than some other materials allowed.

But as far as actually issuing an opinion on whether vinyl should or should not be used, USGBC politely punted – much to the chagrin of environmentalists and green building advocates. I vividly remember the reaction of Building Operating Management's former senior editor, a staunch greenie, upon reading the report: “USGBC chickened out!” Other reactions were similar. An organization called the Healthy Building Network published a strongly worded response in its newsletter comparing the risk assessment process used in USGBC’s decision to the one used to defend cigarette smoking. Do you think they were also slightly perturbed?

Even so, many rejoiced - including the rather influential Vinyl Institute, which argues that vinyl is better environmentally than many other materials because its long life means that it prevents the frequent use of new raw materials.

So how do things stand now? It seems like the scales are slowly tipping back in favor of the environmentalists. Many more manufacturers (especially carpet) are now touting their products as PVC-free and the overall crusade against vinyl seems to be gaining momentum.

The Vinyl Institute may be getting nervous. Earlier this month they put out an e-mail press release “commemorating” the two-year anniversary of USGBC’s decision (I’d be happy to forward it to you if you’re interested.) But they also expressed concern that a final report, supposedly due this month, would be late. There’s only so long one can subscribe to the “no news is good news” theory, it seems.