2021 Owens Corning Sustainability Report | Expanding Our Product Handprint | Product Innovation & Stewardship | 104 Product Circularity and Recycled Content Recycled content reduces waste and saves resources throughout our manufacturing operations. It also helps our customers comply with green building program requirements and achieve their own sustainability goals. Our commitment to using recycled content in our building materials is demonstrated through a multipronged approach: ■ We seek to include or increase the content of recycled materials in our products and packaging, either in initial design or through continuous improvement. ■ We validate recycled content through third-party verification bodies and offer documentation for use in green building programs such as LEED ® . ■ We promote the attributes of recycled content and educate customers and consumers on the value this brings to reducing landfill waste, as well as saving resources and energy. ■ We promote green products and green operations, including the benefits of recycled content and reducing impact over the products’ life cycles for all the industries we serve. ■ We participate as a member of organizations that promote recycled content in products, including the USGBC and its LEED ® program. Although most of the materials used in our processes are derived from non-renewable resources, we continue to look for opportunities to procure renewable sources, from raw materials to semi-finished goods and packaging. We are also focused on increasing our use of recycled packaging. Glass Recycling Using crushed post-consumer glass — also called cullet — as a raw material decreases community landfill waste, and it lowers our energy use associated with manufacturing insulation, as starting with raw materials such as sand requires more energy. In fact, the Glass Packaging Institute (GPI) reports that energy costs drop by about 2-3% for each 10% of cullet used in manufacturing. Even as we strive for higher recycled-glass content in our insulation products, the supply of recycled glass is at risk. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, only 31.3% of all glass containers were recycled in 2018 (the last year for which data have been published). In addition, many U.S. municipalities have removed glass from their curbside recycling programs, further threatening cullet supply. To help counteract these trends, Owens Corning works with other companies and organizations to support the glass recycling industry and the glass recycling supply chain as a whole. The Glass Recycling Coalition (GRC) and the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association (NAIMA) are two of our key partners. Through GRC and NAIMA, we are particularly focused on promoting glass recycling in the Southeast, Northeast, Midwest, and Texas. We also helped form a glass cullet task force, with the following objectives: ■ Improving communication on end-use of glass containers to make fiberglass. ■ Increasing glass container recycling rates. ■ Improving glass cullet quality. ■ Protecting current recycling programs at the state and local levels. Owens Corning participates in several educational and informational workshops, including those by the Closed Loop Fund and recycled glass processor Strategic Materials, to promote open dialogue and collaboration among stakeholders interested in glass recycling. As we work to reduce our impact on the environment, and despite ongoing challenges in a number of communities across the U.S., we continue to seek to increase our use of postconsumer bottle glass in North America. We believe the availability of high-quality recyclable glass is critical to the ongoing execution of both our environmental ambitions and our overall growth strategy. . PRODUCT SUSTAINABILITY & TRANSPARENCY As we develop more end-of-life solutions and increase recycled content in our products and packaging, we make great strides toward enabling the circular economy model — which is essential to our sustainability ambitions.