The Battle Over “Green” Plastics Continues In The Building & Construction Industry

Those who were once resistant to alternative plastic building materials are now taking a second look! Consumers are realizing the benefits of many plastic building products for both interior and exterior uses. According to this Plastics Today article, builders are embracing these new products as well. 

Plastics Today

This week, David Levine, CEO of the American Sustainable Business Council, took the opportunity to rake the plastics industry over the coals while SPI and other plastics industry groups held their "fly-in" in Washington, D.C. In Levine's commentary, Plastic Industry's Faulty Lobbying Agenda that appeared in this week's issue of The Hill, he chided the industry for what he called "a brazen attempt to block progress."

Levine refers to the plastics industry's opposition to the LEED v4 (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) building standards, and believes that the industry's time would be better spent on an agenda to "move away from toxic chemicals and toward safer chemicals and products using safer plastics."

This is an argument that is almost as old as the LEED standard itself. I can remember when I first began covering the International Builders Show (IBS) a number of years ago, there were a number of presentations from builders over whether or not to even certify any buildings that contained plastics construction materials.

Many would like to disallow a LEED certification to any building containing plastic materials, primarily because in the minds of many, anything "plastic" is a horrible material. The LEED competitor, Green Globes, has its detractors as well, who accuse it of pandering to not only the plastics industry, but to 'big wood' (the lumber industry) as well. We certainly can't have both - the plastics and lumber industries in cahoots in the "green" building industry!

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