You have heard about the benefits of building with Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) walls for years. Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) are proven energy efficient products that have been well documneted to significantly reduce heating and cooling loads in buildings. These products are typically foam stay-in-place concrete forms specified for projects designed to provide high performance building envelope walls.

The backbone of most ICF products is the plastic web connector. It is the inner strength of the product. A good way to gauge the structural strength of an Insulated Concrete Form ICF is to find the ratio (by weight) of plastic (webs) to foam (panels).

At Airlite Plastics Co., parent company of Fox Blocks Insulated Concrete Forms, there are a large number of machine presses molding plastic products to specific tolerances. Anything that does not meet the product specifications is set aside and designated as usable plastic waste (scrap) to be recycled. None of this plastic scrap leaves the plant, so there is ZERO plastic landfill contribution. These out-of-spec products are transferred under the same roof to the recycling area.

While at recycling, the plastic scrap is mechanically ground into flakes, pelletized, and then put through a proprietary process to be remanufactured. This 1st generation recycled plastic is then transferred to the production machine presses, under the same roof to mold Fox Blocks Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) plastic webs and corner brackets. These fresh molded webs and corner brackets are then delivered for placement into the foam molds that produce finished Fox Blocks Insulated Concrete Forms. This internal recycling process dramatically lowers the overall Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) manufacturing carbon footprint because there are minimal transportation costs, as everything is performed on site. Airlite is using their in-house plastic waste stream process to source material to manufacture Insulated Concrete Form products.