Owens Corning is the first manufacturer to receive GREENGUARD Certification for its extruded foam board products. Additionally, many of Owens Corning’s insulating products available in Canada, including PINK fiber glass and rigid foam insulation, have also been awarded GREENGUARD Certification.

Being acknowledged by the GREENGUARD Environmental Institute is an honour and an affirmation of the all-around quality of our insulating products. And we’re thrilled to be the first manufacturer to have certified extruded foam products, said George Kiemle, president of Owens Corning’s Insulating Systems Business.

Receiving GREENGUARD Certification is beneficial for our customers, because indoor air quality and green building are of growing interest among construction professionals, Kiemle continued. Now, in addition to the assurance our customers get from the Owens Corning brand, this high-caliber third-party certification gives them added confidence that using our products results in structures that have few emissions a confidence they can share with customers who are concerned about the air quality of their indoor environments.

The only program of its kind, the GREENGUARD Certification and labelling program subjects interior products and building materials to rigorous emissions tests. The certification process involves the testing of products in dynamic environmental chambers for emissions of formaldehyde, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), respirable particles and other pollutants. The GREENGUARD Certification for indoor air quality complies with criteria set forth by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Green Building Council?s LEED? program, and other notable organizations.

Both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the EPA recently cited indoor air quality as a critical environmental problem in the U.S. today. Only low-emitting products that do not compromise the air quality of indoor environments are awarded GREENGUARD Certification and labeling.

Formaldehyde, as mentioned above, is one of several substances measured during the GREENGUARD testing process. All products awarded GREENGUARD Certification including certified Owens Corning fiber glass insulating products have been found to emit minimal amounts of formaldehyde, thereby supporting the conclusions of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the EPA that fiber glass insulation is not a significant source of formaldehyde in the home.

We’re pleased to award GREENGUARD certification to Owens Corning, said Henning Bloech, director of communications for GREENGUARD. Granting certification to such a recognized insulation brand helps our organization spread the message about the importance of indoor air quality to building professionals and homeowners everywhere.

Since we invented fiber glass insulation in the 1930s, Owens Corning has been committed to the development of environmentally friendly, safe, high-quality products. We applaud the GREENGUARD Environmental Institute for urging more and more manufacturers to do the same, said Kiemle. This certification goes hand in hand with our continued dedication to promote energy efficiency, an issue that is also critical to the environment and the sustainability of our natural resources.

Owens Corning is a world leader in building materials systems and composite systems. Founded in 1938, the company had sales of $4.9 billion in 2002. Additional information is available on Owens Corning’s Web site at www.owenscorning.com or by calling the company?s toll-free General Information line 1-800-GETPINK.

The GREENGUARD Environmental Institute, founded in 2001, is a global, Washington D.C.-based, non-profit organization with a scientific, third-party board to establish indoor air quality standards for interior products and building materials. An independent organization, the GREENGUARD Environmental Institute is not affiliated with or sponsored by any manufacturer or industry. The Institute?s goal is to improve public health and quality of life by encouraging and helping manufacturers to build better, safer products and uphold environmental practices in product development, manufacturing and distribution. For more information, please visit www.greenguard.org.

At this level of recycled content, the amount of waste glass diverted from landfills could form a two-lane glass highway that extends 1.3 times around the world(1). The certification, supplied by leading, independent third-party certifier Scientific Certification Systems (SCS), demonstrates a five percent increase over its prior level and maintains the product line’s status as the fiberglass insulation with the highest level of certified recycled content in North America.

Made with 40 percent recycled glass, Owens Corning’s PINK Fiberglas(TM) insulation contains the highest level of certified recycled content for fiberglass insulation in North America. Owens Corning is one of the largest users of recycled glass in the world. In addition to the environmental benefits of utilizing post-industrial and post-consumer waste, the use of recycled content in PINK Fiberglas(TM) insulation also helps reduce Owens Corning’s energy use and C02 emissions by nearly 13 percent. Manufacturing fibreglass with recycled glass requires significantly less energy.

“Glass takes over a million years to break down and for every piece kept out of a landfill, we not only reduce waste, but put the glass to work as insulation to help increase energy efficiency in the built environment,” said Frank O’Brien-Bernini, chief sustainability officer for Owens Corning. “Increasing the recycled content of our products also enables us to reduce the energy intensity of our manufacturing process, which fulfills our company’s commitment to greening its products and processes.”

As a result of these efforts, Owens Corning is one of the largest users of recycled glass in the world. To continue to help the market find additional sources of recycled glass, Owens Corning is leading initiatives with regional recyclers and processors to invest in technologies that will reduce the amount of glass sent to landfills, either because no local recycling programs exist or due to technical limitations in recycling different types and colors of glass. One such program involves Strategic Materials Inc., a Texas-based processor of scrap glass collected from a diverse range of sources including new curbside recycling programs. Once construction is completed, the glass the company will recycle at plants in Texas and Georgia will keep approximately 12,500 tons of glass per month from going to a landfill, and be reused in products including Owens Corning insulation.

“The leadership demonstrated by companies such as Owens Corning to continually increase the content of recycled material in their products is actually driving the creation of local and regional recycling programs,” said Curt Bucey, president of Strategic Materials Inc. “Glass recycling is very effective in reducing the need for natural resources and minimizing landfill waste. It’s also key to reducing energy use and decreasing harmful emissions, and should be a part of our nation’s energy policy.”

SCS approved the certification of PINK Fiberglas(TM) insulation, as well as the company’s commercial fiberglass products, after a rigorous four-step process that included a comprehensive audit of the company’s claims, including visits to manufacturing facilities to see the process and interview plant personnel. This recognition by SCS assures building professionals using Owens Corning fiberglass insulation of the recycled content in order to help achieve LEED(R) certification and meet other green building guidelines.

1. Keep the heat out! During the day, if it’s cooler inside than outside, keep windows shut. And keep window shades down to block out direct sunlight. Use light or reflective window coverings. Open the windows at night if it’s cooler outside than in. Solar shades can help. And the more ambitious project, new low-e windows with a low “solar heat gain coefficient” can block the heat from the sun. Single pane windows can turn your home into a GREENHOUSE, which is great if you want to grow tomatoes in your living room.

2. Ceiling fans (and other fans) help you stay comfortable—but only while you’re in the room. The fan motors actually generate heat, so turn them off when you’re not there. Another trick is to turn on the the “summer fan” option of your furnace. This will run the furnace fan, without the heat, and exchange the air in your home. It’s particularly useful if you do it in the early evening when things start to cool down.

3. Use a bath fan vented to the outside to remove the heat and moisture created by showering. If you don’t have a bath fan, install one.

4. Similarly, use a kitchen exhaust fan to remove heat and moisture created by cooking. This has the added benefit of removing pollutants, especially if you cook with gas.

5. Use efficient lighting and appliances. Incandescent and halogen lights actually use most of their energy creating heat instead of light. Not only does this means you’re overpaying for lighting, but in the summer you’re creating a lot of unwanted heat in the rooms you’re trying to keep cool. Compact florescent light bulbs have improved greatly over the past several years. The humming, slow starts, and weird colours of years past are gone.

6. Do you have a forced air heating or cooling system? If so, make sure to have adequate attic insulation to keep that cool air in. As much as 30% of the air you cool can escape outside through a poorly insulated ceiling.

7. Insulate and air-seal your attic. If your home was built to the building code, it should have an adequate vapour barrier, already installed. In the summer, temperatures in the attic often climb to more than 140 degrees. Proper insulation can keep this heat from conducting down into your home.

8. If you have a central air-conditioner, keep it tuned up. If it’s more than 10 years old, consider replacing with a high-efficiency unit, one that at least qualifies for ENERGY STAR. If your buying a window air-conditioner or dehumidifier, look for the ENERGY STAR, too.

9. Planting deciduous trees on the south and west sides of a house can help keep your home cool in the summer. In many parts of the country, maples, oaks, and birches are good trees to consider. Because they drop their leaves in the fall, they let sunlight through to help warm your house in the winter.

10. To really find the trouble spots in your home, and to be sure that they’re addressed properly, get a comprehensive home assessment like the eco-Energy assessment.

And whether you do the work yourself or you have it done by a contractor, after you tighten the house you should have any combustion equipment like furnaces and water heaters tested to make sure they’re running safely and efficiently.

That’s when you install something to fill up that hole like a window or door or vent. All of these are specially designed to prevent air infiltration, of course. Even then, you need to add weatherstripping and caulking to ensure that no cracks remain.

There’s another category of holes we make in walls, where these holes don’t go all the way through — these holes are for electrical outlets and light switches. The typical exterior wall in a house is made with 2″x4″ or 2″x6″ studs with sheathing and siding on the outside and sheetrock on the inside. Between the studs should be as much batt insulation as will fit snugly. Electrical outlets are then installed in a plastic box about 3″ deep that is either shoved or cut into the insulation. Anyone who has worked with an electrician can tell you that electricians are not worried about insulation. For electrical outlets on exterior walls, there is typically little or even no insulation between the outdoors and the inside of the house.

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