Sika Sarnafil Recognized by SPE with Award

The Society of Plastics Engineers has given its Winning the Plastics Recycling Technologies and Applications Award to Canton, Mass.-based Sika Sarnafil, for its roof recycling program. Through the program, the company recovers and recycles roofing membrane into new roofing products. The program already had been recognized by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs in 2009.

Sika Sarnafil’s PVC recycling program is designed to recover and recycle vinyl-roofing membrane back into new roofing membrane at the end of the roofs useful life.

The award was presented at the SPE’s Global Plastics Environmental Conference on Oct. 18, 2011. Sika Sarnafil claims it is the only single ply roofing manufacturer with a program that is designed to recycle old roofs back into roofing membrane at the end of its useful life and the only company to have its recycling claims verified by UL Environment.

Sika Sarnafil says it has recycled 27.4 million pounds of post-industrial vinyl since 2004 and 852,000 pounds of post-consumer roofs since 2005.

“Sika Sarnafil continues to address energy conservation issues with this ground-breaking resource recovery program,” Brian Whelan, Sika Sarnafil senior vice president, says. “We divert more than 98 percent of our vinyl raw materials from the waste stream by recycling them into roofing and waterproofing membranes. And, we make it easy for customers to achieve their sustainability goals with energy-efficient solutions that minimize waste and environmental impact.”

Sika Sarnafil’s major roof recycling projects include:
 

• Canadian Tire in Toronto – The project demonstrated Canadian Tire’s green policy and implemented the three “R’s of Green” – reduce, reuse, recycle.
• General Motors – In a real-world demonstration of “closed loop” recycling, Sika Sarnafil completed the largest vinyl roof recycling project in North America at a General Motors Customer Care & Aftersales building in Lansing, Mich.
• Target – Numerous stores, including a retail center in Silver Spring, Md., have worked with Sika Sarnafil. This roof recycling project contributed to the goal of helping Target to become a “zero waste” company.
• The Burlington Coat Factory – A 120,000-square-foot roof portion of the Briggsmore Shopping Center in Modesto, Calif. was replaced with a new Sika Sarnafil system while the old roof will be recycled into other Sika Sarnafil products.
• University of Iowa, Hawkeye Arena – The university recycled its old roofing membranes.
• The Marriott Long Wharf Hotel on Boston Harbor – Sika Sarnafil’s first major roofing recycling project in North America in 2005, this project kicked off Sika Sarnafil’s roof recycling program.

Sika Sarnafil ships containers and pallets to contractors free of charge. The recycled materials are loaded and turned over to Sika Sarnafil for processing. Contractor labor costs related to recycling are minimal, and are often offset by savings in municipal disposal fees.

More information is available at usa.sarnafil.sika.com.