Plastics
During the past 11 years, DaVinci® Roofscapes, a division of Westlake Royal Building Products™ USA Inc. has reprocessed more than 10.9 million pounds of polymer scrap materials. The composite slate and shake roofing manufacturer announced that its operations successfully recycled 1,697,249 pounds of polymer waste in 2022 – the most ever recycled by the company in a single year.
“This is more than half a million pounds of scrap in excess of what we reprocessed in 2021,” according to Mark Pagel, general manager at DaVinci Roofscapes in Lenexa, Kansas. “For the sixth consecutive year we have contributed to net zero landfill scrap. Our waste is repurposed and reused, making this plant an exceptionally environmentally friendly operation.”
At DaVinci, every pound of polyethylene scrap generated by the company’s expansive manufacturing operation goes into repurposed product. Green initiatives are always being enhanced to assure scrap from making roofing tiles is recycled. The first priority is to reuse the product at the Lenexa operations.
“We make our composite roofing and siding tiles with virgin polymers,” says Pagel. “Our products are created in dozens of colors and color blends. When we switch from one color to another, there’s a natural transitioning period between the colors during the change. Those transition tiles are ‘off spec’ and cannot be used, so we recycle them.”
Pagel relates that the transition tiles are carefully pulled off the product line. They’re segregated into specifically colored scrap bins. In the past year, 635,941 pounds of these colored tiles were ground up and repurposed into starter roofing tiles, which are generally unseen on the roof. The reground product was also inserted into the underside cavity on solid accessory roofing parts, with virgin resins used on the top visible portion of the product.
The remainder of the recycled product was shipped out of the DaVinci facility for use by other companies. One of those companies, Dimex, used 539,414 pounds of recycled DaVinci product to make landscaping materials for consumer use. The remaining 521,894 pounds were shipped to additional companies that turn them into pallets.
DaVinci slate and shake tiles are made of virgin resins, UV and thermal stabilizers. A highly-specialized fire retardant is added to the mix, making them fire resistant. DaVinci products are warranted to last decades on homes and commercial projects. However, after their lifespan, they are also 100 percent recyclable. These same features make the recycled polymers advantageous when they are used in recycled products.