The Plastic Pipe and Fittings Association (PPFA) certified the first two businesses — a pipe extruder and a fittings producer — to meet requirements of its new Sustainable Manufacturing Conformity Assessment Program (SM-CAP).
Silver-Line Plastics Corp. of Asheville, N.C., which makes pipe and tubing from PVC, chlorinated PVC, polyethylene and cross-linked PE, and Lasco Fittings Inc. of Brownsville, Tenn., which makes PVC and CPVC pipe components, qualified for the certification.
The program verifies year-over-year reductions in use of resources used and seeks to spur continuous improvement in green practices.
“The program pushes us to create efficiencies in our manufacturing processes and improve the environmental footprint of our facilities,” Lasco President and CEO Jack McDonald said in a news release.
Lasco serves the golf irrigation, plumbing, pool/spa and industrial markets from its headquarters and eight U.S. warehouse centers.
SM-CAP measures a manufacturing operation's water use, energy use, packaging materials waste, material conversion efficiency, and product material waste. Other criteria promote plant safety, safe product use, continual participation in industry life-cycle analysis, and maintaining certification for American National Standards governing product quality and safety.
“It was a thorough task that required us to examine many of our own processes, but it lead us to make good changes and we certainly believe it was well worth it,” Silver-Line Plastics President and CEO Ricky Silver said in a news release.
Silver-Line makes irrigation, well-casing, plumbing, electrical and utility products.
Richard Church, PPFA's executive director, said the program lays an important foundation for the industry.
“While the plastic pipe and fittings manufacturing process is very clean by any comparison to other manufacturing processes, our members felt PPFA needed to create a program that challenged the industry to continue to improve the process to leave less and less of an environmental footprint,” he said in a news release.
