Ideagen Global - Catalyze Magazine, March 2023

INNOVATION AND SUSTAINABILITY IN THE ROOFING INDUSTRY JEFF TERRY VICE PRESIDENT, CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY & SUSTAINABILITY, GAF George Sifakis: What role do you see innovation playing in advancing sustainability in the roofing industry and beyond, and how do you support and encourage this innovation in your work? Jeff Terry: It's a really good question, George, and I love your example because even with innovation, there are guardrails and guideposts that need to be considered. We know we need to cover a building; we know we need to cover a home to make it watertight, but innovation at its core can come to life in a lot of different ways as it relates to the built environment. I'll give you a great example; 39% of atmospheric carbon comes from the built environment. At its core, there are two different ways, whether it's manufacturers or construction companies, that everybody who feeds into the built environment has an opportunity and a role to play in improving our environmental footprint and the impact that the performance of buildings can have on the environment overall. I think through that lens, there's a tremendous opportunity for the role at which the intersection of sustainability and innovation really comes together. Jeff: A number of things that we do and have focused on is how do you reimagine the material makeup of the products that can go on top of a building or on top of a home? We created the first asphaltic shingle, which you hear asphaltic and you think that's a non-renewable resource; well, our goal is to create a circular economy within the roofing sector, and we've been the first company to really imagine, invest in, and figure out how to take the shingles that come off homes and buildings and turn those back into shingles to go on the next roof. That's a technology, that's an innovation that has taken a tremendous amount of resources and time to figure out how to do it because of the chemistry and the approach to how you take this material back, how you process this material, and put it back into a shingle product is very complicated. But it's also critical, and how we think about the material health of the products that we make. CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 6

JEFF TERRY CONTINUED... Jeff: Another good example would be to look at some critical issues beyond roofing material that goes into a landfill, which the circularity focus is intended to help solve. We're starting to look at issues beyond specifically where we can play as one individual company. We're looking at issues in urban heat and understanding that there are a lot of hard surfaces, whether it's on the ground, on roofs, or elsewhere in communities, especially in urban centers. What happens in those situations is when you have extremely hot days and extreme heat dynamics, those hard surfaces really absorb the radiation heat that comes from the sun and keeps the temperature of that community at a very high level, both during the day when the sun's out and also at night. We have worked to create new innovations and new technologies that can reduce the amount of absorption hard surfaces can take on with that radiation heat, whether it's asphalt on the ground or dark roofs on buildings, and actually increase what's called the albedo or the reflectivity of those surfaces that disallow that storage of radiation heat that then stays for longer times during the day and specifically at night, which is when the implications on public health tend to be so much greater. We have the research, development, and innovators within this company that are constantly looking at some of these critical issues. How can we create products that help to serve communities better while at the same time really helping to address some of these critical issues that have a real public impact and public health implications associated with them? CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 7