Green vinyl siding can be the perfect environmentally friendly way to protect the exterior of your house. Green vinyl siding is not only environmentally friendly but is also a cost effective way to protect your home. In recent years there has been more of push to build with greener material. Home owners and builders alike have realized the importance of building with materials that do not have negative impacts on the environment. These materials are important in protecting our planet, and are essential to promoting the overall growth of our economy. Moreover, in some areas, installing green vinyl siding can make you eligible for hundreds of dollars in tax rebates and credits.
What Is Green Vinyl Siding
There are many types of siding on the market, it is important to know the difference between green and standard vinyl siding. There are many factors that make vinyl siding “green.” The biggest reason is due to the material and the manufacturing process that creates the green vinyl siding. Moreover, the amount of byproducts produced by green vinyl siding, in both manufacturing and installation, is dramatically less when compared to other products.
Other reasons why vinyl siding is green deal with the fact that it is lighter and more durable than other siding options. Being lighter reduces the amount of fuel that is used to transport products to market. This lowers the total carbon footprint when compared to other siding options. Additionally, it is more durable, so it lasts much longer on your home. This reduces the amount of vinyl siding that needs to be produced in one year.
Benefits Of Green Vinyl Siding
As mentioned earlier, green vinyl siding is much more durable than other siding products.
This is truly a product that can be added to your home and forgot about, with the exception of a yearly cleaning. This saves you the pain of re-siding your home time and time again. Vinyl siding also looks beautiful on any home, and can actually add value to your home. Plus, vinyl siding is one of the only siding options that have programs that certify both manufactures and installers. This insures that you get a quality product and professional installation.
American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) is the agency that is in charge of quality control for vinyl siding and other products. ASTM has created standards that govern how green vinyl siding is manufactured and installed. This agency insures that you receive a quality product that is made to last. ASTM makes sure that all vinyl siding produced meets rigorous standards of quality, materials, and craftsmanship.
While the environmental factors and ASTM standards make green vinyl siding an attractive choice, there are also substantial energy savings. In recent years there has been the development of insulated vinyl siding. This increases the R-value of your home, and the greater the R-value, the warmer or cooler your home stays. This translates into massive energy savings for you.
In terms of energy savings, green vinyl siding is perfect. Houses consume a lot of energy, so the better insulated a home is the less energy it will consume. The less energy consumed by a home the lower the energy bill. Insulating green vinyl siding has been shown to increase a home’s R-value by nearly 16% when compared to other home siding options. While increasing the R-value of a home decreases the monthly energy bill it also decreases the carbon footprint of the home. These two factors make vinyl siding a very attractive option to side your home.
How It Is Made
Green vinyl siding is green to use, but it is also made in an environmentally friendly option as well. Vinyl siding is green from the manufacturing all the way to installation. The production of vinyl siding creates very little by-product, any scraps can be reused to create another batch of vinyl siding.
The materials that make up vinyl siding are very earth friendly. Most vinyl siding is made from PVC or polyvinyl chloride. The two main ingredients in polyvinyl chloride are chlorine and ethylene. Chloride comes from salt. Salt is one of the most abundant compounds on earth, it is also very sustainable. Ethylene comes from natural gas. Nearly all the natural gas that is used to make vinyl siding comes domestically.
Vinyl siding also contains lower traces of such toxic chemicals like mercury and sliver. This means there are less environmental pollutants in vinyl siding. Vinyl siding is free from lead, one of the most dangerous compounds used in manufacturing. ASTM standards dictate that vinyl siding contains none of these harmful compounds.
Vinyl is also low in dioxin, a very dangerous chemical. Dioxin is produced by other siding materials like brick, cement, and stucco. These materials may create as much as ten times more dioxin than vinyl siding. Even though there has been a steady growth in the vinyl siding manufacturing over the past twenty years, there has been a ninety percent decrease in the amount of dioxin created by vinyl siding in that exact same timeframe. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that vinyl siding contributes to less than two percent of the total dioxin output around the world.
While green vinyl siding is very low in dioxin it is also low in other compounds that can be health risk to the homeowner, installer, and the general public. Many other siding products require installers to wear special protective gear, such as masks and even respirators, when installing their products. The main reason this is require to protect the installer from harmful chemicals there are in the siding. Vinyl siding has no such requirement. There is no need for the installer to wear any protective gear when installing vinyl siding. If installers need to wear protective gear while installing the siding, do you really want your family around it?
Finally, green vinyl siding has been showed to produce less green house gasses then other siding. The energy required to manufacturing vinyl siding is many times less than other siding options like brick and mortar. This means producing enough material for one home uses less green house gases than if you made the siding out of another material. There is also a reduction of the green house gases produced by transporting vinyl siding around the world. Vinyl siding is one of the lightest siding options on the market. Since it is so light it is easily transported throughout the world. Moreover since more can be shipped at one time, there is lower energy costs associated with shipping the vinyl siding. The lower the energy costs the greener the product.
