Green builders and bloggers often hail mineral-wool insulation as an environmentally attractive alternative to plastic foams. But construction of a $150 million factory in West Virginia to meet growing U.S. demand for the insulation has opened deep community rifts and raised fears of air and water pollution. Rockwool, a Danish company that makes a variety of mineral wool products for both commercial and residential applications, is building a manufacturing plant that will bring 150 permanent jobs to Ranson, West Virginia. Site work is well underway, and Rockwool hopes to open the plant by the fall of 2020. But opponents are…

As we continue to see a cultural shift toward supporting and implementing sustainability, recycling and sustainable manufacturing processes are becoming substantially more prominent. When it comes to materials like fiberglass insulation, it’s a one-two punch as this is a material that can substantially improve a building’s energy efficiency, and it is made from glass, a rapidly renewable and readily recyclable material. At JM, we don’t just refine our manufacturing processes to ensure that systems are running as efficiently as possible, we also look for ways that we can incorporate recycled materials into our manufacturing process to reduce waste in our…

In Georgia, for instance, Pratt Industries stopped accepting glass from DeKalb County’s curbside recycling program when it opened a new plant in September 2015. The company said it considered glass a contaminant in the stream, because the material damaged its equipment. The company later said it was developing a network of locations where consumers could drop off glass for recycling. More recently, the city and county recycling agencies in Spartanburg, South Carolina, announced they would end a four year old glass recycling effort and no longer accept glass after March 1, 2016. Curbside collection was not the only thing affected…