Twenty-Six Environmental Groups Call for Investigation into Kingspan’s Marketing Claims 

By staff - Clean Up Kingspan, January 22, 2024

Over two dozen environmental and community organizations – including Greenpeace, 350.org, Food and Water Watch, and the California Green New Deal Coalition – have issued a public letter calling on SCS Global Services to investigate the completeness and accuracy of claims made by insulation manufacturer Kingspan in an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for its star product, QuadCore insulated metal panels. SCS Global provided the third-party verification for the QuadCore EPD in 2022, but it has since acknowledged that it was not required to and did not perform a site audit to verify the information Kingspan submitted. 

Kingspan is a $15 billion global manufacturer of building products which presents itself as “Planet Passionate.” California-based SCS Global Services is one of the leading players offering environmental labeling and certification services including Fair Trade and Carbon Neutral Certifications.

In their open letter, the green groups note that the EPD omits mention of certain labor- and waste-intensive manufacturing processes that were at the center of an OSHA complaint filed by Kingspan workers in September 2023. This apparent omission is raising concerns that the increased demand for products with EPDs and the lack of site audits by third-party verifiers may be presenting an opportunity for greenwashing. 

In their open letter, the green groups note that the EPD omits mention of certain labor- and waste-intensive manufacturing processes that were at the center of an OSHA complaint filed by Kingspan workers in September 2023. This apparent omission is raising concerns that the increased demand for products with EPDs and the lack of site audits by third-party verifiers may be presenting an opportunity for greenwashing. 

Zach Lou is the manager of the California Green New Deal Coalition. “Equitable climate action must mean making sure any company, like Kingspan, that wants to brand itself as part of the solution to the climate crisis, is accountable for the claims it makes. That includes claims about worker health and safety, as well as claims about the environmental impacts of its products,” said Lou.

Recent green building projects constructed using QuadCore panels include the DRV PNK stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home to a Major League Soccer club co-owned by David Beckham; SK Battery EV battery plant in Commerce, Georgia; Ecofibre campus in Kentucky (the first LEED Platinum certified distribution center in the U.S.); a 3.4 million square foot e-commerce center in Tracy, California; and the University of Maryland Jones-Hill Athletic Center.

Kingspan is using the EPD to claim that QuadCore has the “lowest global warming potential (GWP) in North America” when compared to similar insulated metal panel products. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.