The Plastic Pipe and Fittings Association (PPFA) is pleased to announce that Silver-Line Plastics, the first North American plastic pipe producer to be certified to PPFA's "Sustainable Manufacturing Conformity Assessment Program for Plastic Piping Components" (SM-CAP), has added its Ft. Pierce, FL facility to the certification. All of Silver-Line's manufacturing facilities (NC, OK, & FL) have now earned certification. The program certifies reductions in a manufacturer's year-over-year environmental footprint by careful analysis and measurement of resource use.
Ricky Silver, President and CEO of Silver-Line Plastics, said: "We strongly believe in the program PPFA has established, which encourages all manufacturers in our industry to join us in an effort to improve our environmental footprint and create efficiencies in our manufacturing processes. Having all of our facilities certified to the program is a significant accomplishment for our company, considering that this challenging program requires us to examine all of our resource usage and operational processes."
Certification to SM-CAP means that a facility meets the requirements set forth in PPFA's "Sustainable Manufacturing Standard (SMS-01-2012)". The standard establishes requirements for measuring both the existing environmental performance and the continuous improvement thereof by manufacturers of plastic piping system components. SMS 01-2012 applies to those who manufacture plastic piping system components and to the resources used in the manufacturing process.
SM-CAP creates year-to-year reductions in water use, energy use, packaging materials waste, material conversion efficiency, and product material waste. In addition criteria are set to promote plant safety, safe product use, continual participation in industry Life Cycle Analysis, maintaining certification for American National Standards governing product quality and safety, and generally lowering the company's environmental footprint.
Richard Church, PPFA's Executive Director stated, "While the plastic pipe and fittings manufacturing process is very clean by any comparison to other manufacturing processes, our members felt PPFA needed to create a program that challenged the industry to continue to improve the process to leave less and less of an environmental footprint. Our certification program lays the foundation for this to happen."
