Each year, Earth Day – April 22 – marks the anniversary of what many consider to be the birth of the modern environmental movement started in 1970. Now, 42 years later, as a part of that movement, TUFF SHED continues to make efforts to manufacture products that are environmentally friendly.

While we’re constantly working to reduce our carbon footprint, most people don’t realize that we currently use many methods and raw materials designed specifically to minimize our negative impact on the environment, which is too often associated with the building construction process. And we try to partner with other companies that value sustainability too.

We start by looking for raw materials that are safe to handle and produced in such a fashion as to conserve resources. Additionally, we have adopted several building practices designed to create efficiency, limit waste and reduce trips back and forth to a job site.

In fact, did you know that many of our suppliers have been given numerous awards and recognized in their industries for their sustainability efforts? Here are a few examples of the products that we use at TUFF SHED that are environmentally friendly:

• Paint – we use Glidden Professional Exterior Paint, which meets the Master Paint Institute Green Performance Standard, has an extremely low V.O.C. and exceeds even the most stringent air quality standards anywhere in the United States.
• Siding – we use Louisiana Pacific materials that are harvested from sustainable, self-regenerating Aspen forests. Aspen trees are harvestable within 15 years, which is roughly half of the time required for other wood species.
• Shingles – our shingles are from Owens Corning who established the nation’s first shingle recycling program – recycling more than 80,000 tons of asphalt shingles, the equivalent of saving 80,000 barrels of oil.

In addition to using environmentally friendly products, at TUFF SHED we have made an effort to employ the most environmentally friendly building practices possible. For example:

• We pre-fabricate many of our building components inside our factories, which reduces the amount of time needed assemble the building on-site, subsequently cutting back on the amount of trips our builders have to make to complete the job.
• We apply paint to our buildings with conventional rollers that are bagged afterwards for later use without washing them. This process produces zero particle emissions (associated with spraying paint) and zero grey water contamination (associated with washing rollers).

So while we’re excited to celebrate Earth Day this Sunday, we are even more excited to be able to say that here at TUFF SHED we make an effort to save the environment every day!