Aug 27 2008
Spray Foam Insulation Uses Soybean As Partial Substitute for Petroleum
Companies are producing spray foam insulation using soybean oil in place of some of the petroleum in their products. It’s good to see healthier products being produced by responsible companies. Check out the full article I wrote at BuildingGreenTV.
Additionally, George Chittenden with Spray Foam Energy Solutions shares some very on-point information regarding spray foam with this blog post.
Suzy,
While I appreciate your interest is “Green” products I am dismayed that you do not have your facts correct. BioBased Insulation does in fact use some soy in there soray foam but it by no means replaces the petroleum. All Spray Foam Insulation is pertoleum based. Many of the manufactures replace a small part of the petroleum with soy, castor bean oil, sugar cane oil or new and recycled vegetable oil. In the case of BioBased they replace less than 10 percent of the 100 gallon mix with soy. Other manufactures are replaceing up to 20 percent of the mix with renewable and recycled ingredients.
This whole soy vs vegetable oil vs castor oil is just marketing hype. The real “green” effect of spray foam insulation is the 50 to 60 percent reduction in heating and cooling costs that the building will incurr. What is the “green” effect of reducing the energy used by a building by 50 percent for 50, 75 or 100 years. This is the real “green” advantage.
George
Thanks George for your input. I corrected the errors I was mislead to believe were true. Gotta love Green Hype. I was most interested in writing about the ability of industries to include alternative ingredients to produce more responsible product.