VSC Member Spotlight: Sika
Members of the Vinyl Sustainability Council prioritize sustainability in every aspect of their business. It’s not just window dressing, sustainability is core to their operations.
For Sika Corporation, sustainability has been part of the fabric of the company since its inception in 1910. We sat down with Bill Bellico, Vice President Marketing and Inside Sales to learn more about their commitment to sustainability, why it matters for their business and their customers, and what value he sees the +Vantage Vinyl program bringing to the industry.
Tell us about your company, its products and markets.
Sika is a global company that manufactures a wide variety of products and system for the construction industry as well as acting as a supplier to the transportation, automotive and renewable energy manufacturing industries. One of our largest segments in the U.S. market is in commercial roofing systems led by our Sarnafil PVC product line. Sarnafil roofing products originated in Switzerland with the introduction of the world’s first reinforced, thermoplastic roofing membrane in 1962 and later introduced production in the U.S. market in the 1970’s. Since that time, Sika has strived to be an innovation leader in PVC roofing for over 60 years. Our roofs have been used to protect some of our most important spaces like hospitals, educational facilities, data centers, food & beverage production facilities, stadiums and arenas, retail and office space and much more.
What role do companies have in sustainability? How has Vinyl Sustainability Council membership helped shape your company’s sustainability initiatives?
To me, all companies play an important role in driving sustainability for the greater good of the human race. Our collective efforts can have a direct effect on helping preserve natural resources, aid in mitigating climate change, support human health, minimize waste and generally transforming innovation for more sustainable products and operations. Sika’s Vinyl Sustainability Council membership has continued to help support our efforts to continuously improve and lessen our impacts over time.
Is sustainability an important consideration for your customers?
For many of our building owner and specifier customers, sustainability continues to be a growing attribute they are looking at when making product considerations. The design community in general is highly motivated to continue to lessen the impact of the built environment as well as select products with more transparency and lessened impacts. Many of our large building owner customers are continuing to establish their own sustainability metrics to increase their perceived value to customers, employees and investors alike.
What do you wish your customers knew about your company’s sustainability initiatives?
One of things that has kept me at Sika and in roofing for so long has been how much of a commitment there has been to our sustainability efforts, especially within PVC roofing. We are constantly working on new innovations and efforts that can help move the needle in the contributions of our products or the impacts of our operations. What I see as the biggest challenge in sustainability is the desire to oversimplify it as a decision-making tool. What I mean is that some segments of our customer base tend to focus only one particular sustainability metric or another, limiting their decision-making process to just one or two criteria. This completely makes sense as we all would like the easy button to make these decisions. But what this misses is that sustainability can be a highly complex and nuanced topic, and the best practice is to use a multi-attribute approach. The best approach is building a bit of a sustainability report card when comparing products and seeing how your options stack up in that framework. Considering things like how long a product lasts, can it be recycled, etc. in addition some of the other usual metrics can help customers make a choice based on a more holistic view of a product’s impact versus only a limited scope.
What role does +Vantage Vinyl verification play in your company’s sustainability commitments now and in the future?
Sika has made a major commitment to sustainability and baked it into the core philosophy of the company. This includes Sika making the 2050 Net Zero pledge. The +Vantage Vinyl program is just another way we like to demonstrate our commitment to our efforts to offer sustainable products and lessen our impacts. The program’s framework aligns perfectly with our efforts on this front and has really helped us continue to communicate that commitment to our customers.