Achieving Sustainability

As I toured the show floor at the 2024 International Roofing Expo, there is one word I heard over and over again: sustainability. Material manufacturers stressed the durability and longevity of their products and systems — and their performance during extreme weather events. They put the spotlight on end-of-life recyclability and the use of recycled content. They also stressed the roof system’s impact on a building’s energy efficiency and the role of the roof as a platform for solar power generation.

Sustainability has evolved to become a term covering a lot of facets, but one thing appears certain: The concept is at the heart of modern building design and construction.

Ellen Thorp, Executive Director of the EPDM Roofing Association (ERA), agrees. That’s one reason why the ERA produced its first annual report titled “The View From the Roof: Building a Sustainable Future.” This document was designed to serve as a resource for the roofing professionals. Goals include helping ensure that anyone interested in creating or investing in a sustainable roofing system has access to up-to-date information about best practices to be followed.

“Sustainability in the most basic sense is the act of providing for current needs without compromising the ability of future society to provide for its needs as well,” said Thorp. “If anything, it has strengthened over the past decade, becoming more established, all encompassing, and more strongly rooted in our lexicon. The result is that we have trained ourselves to automatically consider sustainability.”

Given the roof system’s crucial role in a building envelope’s resilience and energy efficiency, the roofing industry should embrace leadership in the sustainability movement. “Stakeholders in the built environment must have a comprehensive understanding of what sustainability means,” Thorp said. “There are several aspects of sustainability that must be considered in a roof assembly: longevity, durability, recyclability, resilience, global warming potential, and the ability to be used as a platform for renewable energy.”

Sustainability is a concept that is breaking through with building owners. “Savvy stakeholders who consider the service life cost of a sustainable roof (rather than just the cost at install) are using that rooted notion of sustainability to help guide their decisions,” Thorp noted. “There are a couple other stakeholder groups who aren’t quite there yet, but I’m confident that they will catch up soon.”

For more information on ERA’s report, check out Ellen Thorp’s column in this issue or visit https://epdmroofs.org/epdm–todays-choice/sustainability/.