Certified sustainable

By Emma Peterson. 

Inside the certification and engineering that guides Duro-Last's path towards sustainability.  

Over the last decade, Duro-Last has helped divert over 100 million pounds of PVC from landfills by creating more sustainable roofing systems. In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, Megan Ellsworth sat down with Tess Heston to talk about how Duro-Last has done this through careful engineering and third-party certifications. 

Tess, who has a master's in finance and climate change from the Imperial College of London and is currently Duro-Last's sustainability specialist, highlighted the team behind-the-scenes, sharing, “At Duro-Last, we have an excellent team of building engineers that can help design a building to be the most sustainable, most energy efficient and to just operate better over its entire lifespan... They are always asking, ‘Can we adjust something here or create a new product that would help our customers make more energy efficient and sustainable building envelopes.’”  

The other thing she talked about was how Duro-Last works with third-party organizations, like NSF/ANSI and LEED, to ensure they are continually maintaining and improving their sustainability practices. 

NSF/ANSI 347 is a sustainability standard and assessment that checks “the sustainable attribute of single ply roofing over their product lifecycle.” Tess shared a bit about the process, saying, “We just got re-certified this year and it was a year's work in the making of gathering information. Then they come and visit your site to ask questions to make sure everything's correct. It's extremely thorough and it's one of the reasons that we really try to use NSF/ANSI 347 over other sustainability assessments just because of how rigorous and respected it is.” 

As for LEED (otherwise known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), where NSF/ANSI addresses the sustainability of a specific product, LEED is a certification for completed buildings. Essentially, to get LEED certificated, you need to choose materials and building designs that are sustainable. 

Tess shared an example of how this works with Duro-Last products, saying, “If you use a Duro-Last roofing system with the reflective roof membrane using PVC and certain types of coatings, insulation and design features, you can gather points to then go to LEED and say, ‘We have gathered so many points. We are ready to submit our building for LEED certification.’” At the end of the day, Duro-Last's dedication to getting their products certified with both LEED and NSF/ANSI shows the depth of their commitment to sustainability. 

Read the transcript or Listen to the entire episode for more about Duro-Last and their continuing legacy of sustainability.