Three of APL’s window and door ranges have been the subject of an independent environmental and life cycle assessment by external consultants.

The 60-page PDF, downloadable here, is an Environmental Product Declaration compiled by thinkstep-anz and involved a deep analysis of the inputs, outputs and life cycle story of Residential Series ThermalHEART®, Metro Series ThermalHEART® and Commercial Series (Magnum and Shopfront) windows and doors. These ranges are marketed nationally by APL Window Solutions and its manufacturer network under the Altherm, First and Vantage brands.

Environmental Product Declarations are science-based and independently verified and are often compared to the nutrition labels on food products. They are increasingly being sought by designers and developers working on new projects.

APL’s Declaration quantifies a wide range of product parameters, including material and accessory composition, raw material and packaging use, resource depletion and climate change impacts, energy use, waste flows, end-of-life impacts and recovery practices. The EPD includes imputed values involved in the extraction of raw materials and transport to and from APL production facilities.

“This was a comprehensive assessment that reached out to include all of APL’s sister companies, all of which are part of Profile Group,” said Sustainability GM, Mikayla Plaw. “Our manufacturer network was also involved in providing 12-month input and output data for such things as packaging, waste flows and energy and water use, so this exercise involved a significant contribution from a lot of people.”

The EPD framework not only included APL, but all Profile Group’s businesses that contribute to the window system — aluminium extruder, INEX; glass supplier, AGP; surface finishing subsidiaries, Finex and ColourWorks; hardware and components maker, APL Manufacturing; seals provider, PPL Plastic Solutions; and transport company APL Direct.

Mikayla said that the Declaration was an information-rich backgrounder that provided an impartial look at three key company product ranges. It has allowed us to draw a line in the sand, properly measure our impact using captured data, and to continue to improve from this baseline.

APL CEO, Dave Downey, said that the company had invested heavily in minimising its environmental footprint and getting recycling and circularity into all aspects of the operation. “This report is not designed to show a list of big green ticks — that’s not its purpose — but we hope that our sustainability efforts come through in the small print. This Declaration is good for five years, but an annual audit is part of the package, so we cannot rest on our laurels.”