Navigating the Sustainability Maze

Sustainability and environmental issues continue to play crucial roles in product approvals and purchasing decisions. While the aggressive push of years past may be tempering, there are debates surrounding sustainability decisions that present crucial risk management considerations. Three examples will show how complex sustainability can become for the glazing industry.

Consumers versus regulators and lawyers

Purchasing is among the most impactful considerations used by companies when deciding whether to move forward with sustainability claims. Consumers for glass and glazing products tend to include educated purchasers like architects, engineers, builders and glass companies themselves. This means that there is an educated customer base looking to make purchasing decisions that will inherently consider topics and issues that are beyond the average person.

With that audience, representations regarding complex sustainability issues have a lot of weight. These purchasers are relying on sustainability criteria to justify product selection for their ultimate consumer—consider per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS; embodied carbon; or post lifecycle repurposing. Where environmental considerations motivate a purchasing decision—positive or negative—companies must be prepared to respond. Yet, this primary motivator often runs into the swamp of regulators and aggressive plaintiff lawyers.

Because the marketplace includes educated parties down-streaming products, seller risk arising from unsupported environmental and sustainability representations grow more substantial. Gone are the days where broad “green” claims will suffice, or companies can rely solely on third-party vetting to ensure compliance. The failure to sufficiently investigate and document environmental representations that motivate purchasing decisions are relied upon by plaintiff lawyers and regulators who, themselves, are motivated to find technical failings. With those failings then tied to hard-dollar purchases, the liability and legal exposure for those failings can give rise to bet-the-business litigation.

State versus federal government

Identifying those potential technical failings within environmental representations is complicated by the varying levels of control and politics surrounding them. Controls over warnings, compliance and disclosure exist at the state and federal levels. Add to that split the fact that these same controls often vary between executive and legislative branches of government, and industries like glazing can find themselves caught between varying obligations depending on location and administration.

A coming example is California’s SB253 and SB261. Both of these legislative enactments relate to required environmental and sustainability disclosures by companies doing business in California by 2026. For companies of a certain size, this will mean publicly disclosing certain greenhouse gas emissions as well as reporting on “climate-related risks” that will be set by California. While the scope of these obligations may not directly reach trade glaziers, suppliers and critical component vendors may soon find themselves having to make these disclosures. And it is those same kinds of sustainability and environmental representations that will be passed to educated consumers to influence purchasing decisions.

These California enactments are currently being contested in court. National interest groups have filed suit challenging that the compelled speech regarding environmental and sustainability issues within these regulations violates the United States Constitution.

These judicial challenges, and any forthcoming federal contests, create further risk relating to compliance. Regardless, preparing for and managing the potential impact of these kinds of disclosures is crucial, regardless of a debate about whether California is on the forefront of required disclosures or a radical outlier.

Industry versus apathy

The volatility in currently required disclosures and compliance obligations can breed an apathy that must be actively challenged by the glazing industry. For many, the ongoing development of sustainability and environmental requirements has devolved into a “call me when they’re done” mentality. Cautioning against that mindset is the recognition that each requirement has an embedded cost and presents a potential risk, both of which could be limited or possibly avoided if voices are heard early and often.

Consider Environmental Product Declarations and Product Category Rule development. These items are ongoing and ever evolving, yet they presently form the core for measuring what will be tomorrow’s obligated sustainability and environmental representations. Getting involved in those processes can seem daunting, but industry associations like the National Glass Association can help direct efforts to maximize learning and impact.

While glass and metal category rules may seem distant to local shop work, the educated consumer will be deciding whether to make a purchase based on required sustainability representations that incorporate those efforts. And whether companies have managed the origin of those requirements or have a process in place to support their own actions can be crucial if it does become time to bet the business.