The EPS Pollution Myth

A message from Duane Heil
vitruvianbuilt.com

EPS is a hugely non polluting product. Sure, if you throw it into the landfill, it never decomposes. Which is the property that makes it a great building material. And if you should ever want to actually remove the wall and roofs from a structure, EPS is endlessly recyclable. But the decay rate is essentially ZERO, so I could never imagine that panels would lose their value as a building element for the next structure. After all, with inflation, they should only appreciate. As far as being healthy, EPS does not off-gas. Our panels replace the plywood shear that is typically on the walls of a house...and plywood has plenty of glue and formaldehyde that offgasses. Also, EPS burns CLEANER than wood, should the place ever burn.

The pollution myth comes from the early days of producing alternate forms of EPS. A blowing agent (which is part of the manufacturing process) produced CFC's. Once this was realized, that method was stopped, just like hair-spray and de-oderant sprays. A reality about using light weight, strong stable materials is that the 'carbon-footprint' is about as small as one can get for any type of structure. And the overall consumption is hugely different in the completed structure and the cost is basically the same as wood framing. While material cost will be nearly double, labor will drop by 2/3'rds. However, if you were to use our software and plan out as accurately with every material that goes into the entire home, both structure and finishes, we consistently find overall savings from 5 to 20%. This is basically a function of better planning. But our software make this task much simpler.