Composite Decking *is* Recyclable

Greg Burnet's "What Makes a Deck Board Green" article points out that until we develop a 'USDA Organic' equivalent for sustainability, green-ness is subjective. However, as a manufacturer of wood-composite decking and railing, a value-added forest product, I feel obligated to address a couple of points that Mr. Burnet makes. Burnet argues that PVC can be recycled, while wood composites cannot. This just isn't true. Both wood-composites and PVC can be and are recycled. I believe the perception that wood-composites aren't recyclable may be based on confusion with fiberglass composites (such as are used for boat hulls). Or, said perception could be based on a 2005 report from the Healthy Building Network that asserted that the blend of ingredients in a wood-composite deckboard, since they can't be unmixed, can't be recycled (no doubt the summer intern that authored this poorly researched yet widely cited report is wearing a paper hat and listening for the beep of the friolator as we speak). In the meantime, we and others have recycled millions and millions of pounds of wood composite articles into tool trays, shutters, lobster trap runners, rot-resistant shims and many other everyday items. Wood-composites can be and are recycled. They represent an excellent environmental choice. Moreover, coextruded products such as CorrectDeck CX especially encourage the use of recycled feedstock, because color risk is eliminated. In 2008, our factory used more than 2 million pounds of recycled #5 polypropylene and many more millions of pounds of recycled hardwood fiber (which comes from the manufacture of golf tees and ice cream sticks). In order to facilitate cradle-to-cradle reuse and recycling, we mark all of our products with their resource content , and we have pioneered a collection program for composite decking jobsite scraps - which of course are recyclable, dammit!Wood -composites, especially those in the ultra-low maintenance category, can compete against the best wood and plastic products in performance, aesthetics and sustainability.

There is no such thing as Class A Fire Resistant Decking

Brands of composite decking and PVC decking now commonly promote themselves as having Class A Flame Spread Resistance. I know that sounds good, and Class A is probably better than Class B, but does it really mean anything? Essentially, no.
There is a standard (a standard and a test method are two different things - one is a requirement, like windows having a certain impact resistance in hurricane prone areas, and the other is a way to make sure two different labs can test the window for impact resistance and get the same result) for decking in Wildland-Urban Interface areas in new construction in California. But it doesn't have classes - it's pass/fail. Either you meet the the minimum requirement or you don't, and in fact a lot of decking that does meet it is ASTM E84 Class C. Here's an excerpt from a paper on this subject written by one of UL's top engineers:

There is no correlation between Steiner Tunnel FSI ratings and effective PHRR as measured by the Under Deck test.
• Class A Steiner Tunnel FSI rating does not guarantee California WUIBS fire compliance.
• California WUIBS fire compliant deck boards may exhibit a Class C Steiner Tunnel FSI rating.

So what is Class A? Well, there are Class A motor homes (a real big one), there's Class A office space (real nice, maybe too nice), and Class A driver's licenses (you can drive the big rigs), and of course Class A jerks (although, jerks are more commonly classified by number - first-class jerk, for example). But there isn't Class A decking.