The spray polyurethane foam industry has been making notable strides in sustainability over the past few years. In part, a reflection of a sector growing in market share and sophistication, the industry’s move toward sustainability is also a result of significant, recent innovations in product chemistry. Nevertheless, these recent strides were spurred long before and are, in essence, the latest achievement on a continuum of green efforts that started more than three decades ago.
In 1987, 20 global economic leading countries got together to raise awareness and create a commitment to the protection of the ozone over growing concerns of its depletion by greenhouse gasses created by vehicle exhaust and other ozone depleting gasses, some natural and some artificially generated. What resulted was an international treaty, structured around the phased elimination of several groups of halogenated hydrocarbons known to deplete stratospheric ozone.