Environmental

The cradle-to-grave impact of single ply, and SPRA policy.
For SPRA, the key issues of sustainability are:
Extensive 1
  • Production - use of raw materials
  • Production - use of energy
  • Release of chemicals during service
  • Waste during installation
  • Health and safety during manufacturer and installation
  • Disposal
  • Recycling

SPRA funded independent research by Building Research Establishment (BRE) in 2006/7.

  • Manufacturers of PVC and FPO submitted detailed raw material, energy and production information.
  • International experts on the environment independently set a priority against a wide range of environmental impacts (e.g. energy use, waste, water use).
  • Manufacturers’ data was set against these criteria.
  • Manufacturers can obtain individual Ecopoint® assessments which can be used to produce Green Guide ratings in a given specification. The generic assessment is generally reduced to allow for the range of manufacture that was not included in the research.
  • Ecopoint® assessments for generic PVC and FPO products were produced.
  • The rating for PVC was 14.3; the rating for FPO was 11.4 This equates to a difference of 25% in a product which is just 1.2 or 1.5mm thick, so it is hardly significant in the full roof system.

THE GREEN GUIDE TO SPECIFICATION (see www.thegreenguide.org.uk)Extensive 2

The Green Guide published by BRE in 2008 looks at ‘cradle-to-gate’ environmental impact by combining EcoPoint® assessments for components with waste and durability data over a 60 year period for the complete building element (e.g. the roof). For example, a warm roof of PVC on all insulation types on a profiled steel deck achieves an A+ rating. A similar specification with FPO membrane is also A+. The A+ to E scale divides the range of EcoPoints® evenly so a product type such as windows (with a small range) may only differ by 0.5 Ecopoints/m2 across the range whereas roofing varies by over 1.5EcoPoints/m2 (so E is four times worse than A+. Therefore ratings for different product types should not be compared. There are moves to build this method into a whole-building rating (similar to that for energy performance.

 
T.0115 914 4445

Membership
Single Ply Roofing Association
We've got it covered