LEED TSAC PVC Study Database > Outreach Forum > Backyard
Backyard
Note: This website is designed so that anyone who has registered and then logged into the site can enter comments and can subscribe to the forum. Comments are visible to all page visitors, logged-in or not.
Information request:
The Task Group is gathering information on the incidence of backyard burning in relation to each of the building materials considered in the analysis. We welcome all citations that provide empirical data on the extent of uncontrolled burning of construction and renovation debris, either as an aggregated waste stream or with reference to specific materials and products, including data on the prevalence of burning, mass fractions or quantities burned in the US.
The materials covered in the report are:
Siding: vinyl, aluminum, wood, fiber-cement
Drain-waste-vent pipe: PVC, ABS, cast iron
Resilient flooring: sheet vinyl, VCT, linoleum, cork
Windows: vinyl, aluminum, wood.
Citation of information sources is required. If it is possible to email PDFs of original source documents, this is encouraged and we will post the original source documents on this web page for others to download. Please email source document PDFs to tsac@greenriver.org.
Stakeholder Submissions
We are not aware of any data on the incidence of backyard burning of waste building materials. Furthermore, US EPA staff that are responsible for gathering information on dioxin emissions indicate that they are not aware of any such data.
Common sense suggests that construction site workers might burn wood in barrels for heat or possibly for volume reduction, but they are unlikely to burn any plastic materials particularly PVC because of the poor burning characteristics of PVC.
As a policy matter, The Vinyl Institute opposes the uncontrolled burning of ANY waste building materials and the backyard burning of waste. The Task Group should note that such a practice would generally be illegal. The Chlorine Chemistry Council prepared an educational brochure opposing backyard burning of waste which is a known source of dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and particulate matter (attached). These pollutants are produced from the uncontrolled combustion of PVC, wood, or any combustible materials. To address this concern, the USGBC may wish to establish a prerequisite in the LEED rating system for the elimination of uncontrolled combustion of ANY MATERIALS or DEBRIS on the construction site. This prerequisite should include no burning of land clearing debris which current EPA estimates indicate may be responsible for the production of 568 grams TEQ of dioxin emission in 2000. (The Inventory of Sources and Environmental Releases of Dioxin-Like Compounds in the United States: The Year 2000 Update (External Review Draft, March 2005; EPA/600/p-03/002A) http://www.epa.gov/ncea/pdfs/dioxin/2k-update/