“The con­cept and idea of the IBU is absolute­ly spot on”

As the year draws to a close, a fur­ther man­u­fac­tur­er of insu­lat­ing prod­ucts, VÖWA GmbH, has become a mem­ber of the Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt e. V. (IBU). The medi­um-sized com­pa­ny from Bob­in­gen in Bavaria has been pro­duc­ing insu­lat­ing mate­ri­als since 1973, spe­cial­is­ing in par­tic­u­lar in the use of poly­ester fibre fleece.

100 per­cent of pro­duc­tion waste is recycledblank

As ear­ly as 1983, VÖWA began putting 100% of the pro­duc­tion waste produced—during the man­u­fac­ture of fleece hoses or when cut­ting sheet prod­ucts, for example—back into the pro­duc­tion cycle. VÖWA has now cre­at­ed the first Envi­ron­men­tal Prod­uct Dec­la­ra­tion (EPD) for its “Vitherm” pan­els for decou­pling and impact sound reduc­tion, which will be ver­i­fied and pub­lished through the IBU’s EPD pro­gramme. “Vitherm pan­els are made up of over 90 per­cent recy­cled mate­r­i­al”, explains man­ag­ing direc­tor Gün­ther Vöst. “We use our own pro­duc­tion waste as well as waste from oth­er com­pa­nies to pro­duce high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts for the con­struc­tion indus­try.” These not only increase the qual­i­ty of the build­ing thanks to the result­ing appli­ca­tion prop­er­ties, but are also extreme­ly durable and weath­er-resis­tant, envi­ron­men­tal­ly com­pat­i­ble and harm­less to health due to the use of poly­ester fibre fleece.

IBU embod­ies a con­vinc­ing and trans­par­ent system

VÖWA cre­at­ed the EPD in response to fre­quent requests from archi­tects, plan­ners and project spon­sors. At the same time, the EPD will help the com­pa­ny in sales and pub­lic rela­tions activ­i­ties to posi­tion itself against com­pet­ing products—for exam­ple by pro­vid­ing detailed infor­ma­tion on the ener­gy required to man­u­fac­ture the prod­ucts, on the mate­ri­als used and on reusabil­i­ty and recy­cling poten­tial. “We are delight­ed to become a mem­ber of the IBU”, empha­sis­es Gün­ther Vöst. “We can already say that the con­cept and the idea are absolute­ly spot on.” Accord­ing to Mr Vöst, VÖWA decid­ed to become a mem­ber “because the IBU embod­ies and demon­strates the very sys­tem of sus­tain­able con­struc­tion. Not only in words, but also in fig­ures, and this is total­ly con­vinc­ing and trans­par­ent in an increas­ing­ly com­plex con­struc­tion indus­try.” The next EPDs for two rein­force­ment sheets are already at the plan­ning stage.