Composite Pavers From VAST Meet EPA Recycled Content Rules

VAST® Enterprises, LLC announced that VAST Composite Pavers meet the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Comprehensive Procurement Guideline (CPG) for patio blocks: 90 to 100 percent recovered content. VAST Composite Pavers are manufactured with VAST's composite material that consists of up to 95 percent recycled automobile tires and plastic containers.

VAST Enterprises produces green building products with its patented technology that turns post-consumer recycled rubber and plastics into an eco-friendly material: composite masonry. VAST has achieved a scientific breakthrough with its proprietary process by engineering the first composite material with 90-plus percent recycled content that has the strength, durability and aesthetic quality for landscape and hardscape applications. VAST composite masonry products include VAST Composite Landscape Pavers, VAST Permeable Composite Pavers for stormwater management, VAST Composite Deck Pavers (a product innovation that brings the style and look of pavers up onto decks), and VAST Brick Wall Fascia. Installations of VAST Composite Pavers to date have kept more than 2.5 million pounds of tires and plastics out of U.S. landfills.

"Our products are cradle-to-cradle green," said Andy Vander Woude, president, VAST Enterprises, LLC. "In addition to starting with post-consumer recyclables, our manufacturing process is low in greenhouse gas emissions, does not generate volatile organic compounds, and leaves no scrap for disposal. And VAST Composite Pavers can be recycled."

To encourage the use of materials recovered through recycling, and thereby reduce the volume of materials in the solid waste stream, Congress has directed government agencies to increase their purchases of recycled-content products. Section 6002 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) requires the EPA to designate products that are made from recovered materials. Once a product category is designated in the CPG directory, procuring agencies are required to purchase it with the highest recovered content level practicable. As part of its continuing efforts to promote the use of recovered materials through the federal buy-recycled program, the EPA periodically adds products that qualify in the categories of the directory.