Soya Spray Foam Insulation: Don’t be Green about the Bean

When it comes to the environment, most of us want to do the right thing. And claims of a product’s greenness can be appealing.

Energy saving spray in foam insulation – an idea that is green in and-of-itself – has an inherent appeal to environmentally conscious consumers. So it’s only logical that some insulation companies and insulating foam manufacturers seek a competitive advantage by making claims that their products are greener than others. In many cases, the green factor is just window dressing to win the hearts of consumers (if not the minds). Beware that sleight-of-hand known as greenwashing.

A study by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing of 2,219 so called “green products” found that 98% engaged in greenwashing.

Case in point, soy home insulation. It sounds good: a farmer’s field swaying in the breeze: organic: renewable. But in reality, the environmental benefits of soy spray foam insulation are questionable.

While some insulation contractors may lead you to believe that certain spray foam insulation is primarily made with soy from soya beans – this is simply not the case. Here’s why:

• Polyurethane foam is a combination of two main, approximately equal, parts: a resin (containing the polyol which contains the soy) and an isocyanate (a hardening agent).
• As a general rule, manufacturing stable polyol requires that the soy content be limited to less than 5%. Note this – soy actually makes for a less stable spray foam insulation product than the component it replaces (more on this shortly).
• Because polyol is roughly half of what makes up polyurethane foam insulation (the other half being iso), soy content in “soy insulations” actually maxes out at a whopping 2.5%!

You would think that, in order to call something soy, or soy-based spray foam insulation, soy content would have to be at least 50%. Yet here we are at approximately 2.5%!

And the story get’s even better. So what element is soy actually replacing? What vile chemical would be so dangerous that an insulation company would have to replace it soy? The culprit is… well… sugar. That’s right, the polyol component soy replaces in most spray-foam insulation products grows in a farmer’s field as well – good ‘ol sucrose.

And remember, using soy instead of sucrose creates a less stable polyol. So, not only is the product not greener, it is arguably inferior as well!

It’s a classic case of greenwashing if ever there was one: drop in a trace amount of something that has green street cred, push that on the packaging and pump up to a premium price point.

So use your bean and forget the soy. And remember that, in general terms, an in spray foam insulation is one of the greenest things you can do. This is just as true, even when you don’t fall for gimmicks designed to exploit your concern for the environment.

It’s just like any other investment that pays big dividends: it’s important not to be green about how you go about it.

Of course, we are here to answer any questions you have about soy insulation – and to offer other, more legitimate, environmental options.