When it comes to the sustainability of roofing products, people often discuss things like the amount of recycled material used during the manufacturing process and the reflectivity that can lead to Cool Roof certification. While those characteristics are important, of course, one crucial thing often slips through the cracks: durability.
It’s not hard to understand why durability equals sustainability. After all, over the course of 100 years, a product that lasts for 30 of those years will need to be replaced less often than a product that only lasts 20 or 25. In other words, a roofing system made entirely of less-durable products can potentially create at least an entire roofing system – per building – of additional waste every century. Multiply that by the number of buildings in a single city or on the entire planet, and durability represents a staggering opportunity to improve sustainability efforts.
That durability is never more apparent than in SOPREMA’s Very Severe Hail (VSH) rated roof systems. Few weather events are more devastating to a roof than hail and, in recent years, hailstorms have become more intense across the country. SOPREMA offers the safety and protection that comes with multi-play roofing systems, and a product quality honed at a worldwide network of research facilities.
SOPREMA’s VSH systems lead the industry by a wide margin, including roughly 50 percent of the RoofNav assemblies listed on FM Global, more than any other roofing manufacturer in the world. These assemblies undergo the most stringent testing to obtain VSH approval and are a testament to the proven resilience and durability of our systems. In all, SOPREMA companies boast 3,134 SBS-modified bitumen system FM approvals, 195 APP-modified bitumen system FM approvals, and 132 PVC FM approvals.
FM Global is a prominent property insurance company specializing in loss prevention and testing, while RoofNav is a complimentary tool that provides access to the most up-to-date FM Approved roofing products and assemblies from FM Approvals. FM Global’s independent testing arm uses scientific research, third-party testing, and certification services to verify that products meet rigorous loss prevention standards of quality, technical integrity, and performance.
So when you’re looking for products that not only provide security against severe weather events, but also offer hidden sustainability benefits, look no further than the thousands of solutions SOPREMA offers to meet any project need.