Blue Vinyl and Environmental Injustices--Conclusion

Although choosing a more environmentally sound product will not solve industry-wide problems for Blue Vinyl's co-director, to at least minimize one aspect of environmental justice, the negative environmental consequences of home construction, Helfand looks for eco-friendly siding alternatives for her parents’ house. Despite setbacks, including struggling with the dilemma of Habitat for Humanity’s vinyl homes being funded by the Vinyl Institute and Helfand’s ineffective programmed meeting with the Vinyl Institute, Helfand discovers reclaimed wood as an alternative for the vinyl that also proves aesthetically pleasing to her parents. Since it costs a small fortune, however, she misses her goal to find an economically feasible alternative and, ironically pays for the new siding herself with money from a DES settlement, her “uterus money,” as she calls it. 

Blue Vinyl provides a clear case that vinyl siding is hazardous to human and nonhuman nature but ends with an ambiguous view of alternatives too expensive for Helfand’s family or Habitat for Humanity homes. Yet it also broaches some wider-reaching solutions to the environmental hazards of PVC, condemning vinyl companies for their knowing endangerment of their employees and of residents near their plants. Blue Vinyl addresses environmental justice issues on both an individual and universal level. Helfand’s film unearths inequities related to geography and racial and class bias, illustrating the extent to which Lake Charles and Mossville, Louisiana, and Venice, Italy, have become “sacrifice zones” in which toxins are tolerated because residents and factory workers lack power. 

Helfand and Baggett help provide them with a voice in both Helfand’s documentary film and the court cases Baggett leads. PVC, vinyl, and industrial ecology The dangers of PVC have been widely documented in research reports, but so have studies that demonstrate the viability of safer and affordable alternatives. According to David T. Allen, “billions of pounds of vinyl chloride are produced annually.” Yet, in their Tufts University study, Frank Ackerman and Rachel Massey effectively document the hazards of PVC and vinyl over its life cycle, but they also note the availability of viable and safe alternatives for PVC products, including wood shingles or clapboard, fiber cement, and simulated stucco. They also refute claims that vinyl is “maintenance free,” arguing that fiber cement is “more durable than vinyl” and “does not warp or burn.” 

Although Helfand and Gold conclude that environmentally sound alternatives are available but costly, Ackerman and Massey disagree, challenging “economic arguments for continued use of PVC” and asserting that alternatives to PVC are not only viable but also economical. According to their report, “academic studies have shown that the costs of environmental protection are routinely overestimated in advance, and decline rapidly after implementation.” Ackerman and Massey’s results are reinforced by the research conclusions of both G.K. Al-Sharrah, et al and David Goldsmith, engineers who highlight the need to insert environmental objectives in industry analyses that “represent sustainability giving good results in selecting environmentally friendly processes and at the same time profitable” outcomes (1). Goldsmith, on the other hand, argues against “an anthropocentric model of nature as a supplier of resources” and instead asserts “that it would be beneficial to critically examine the ethical basis for sustainable built environments. 

These studies demonstrate the viability of an environmentally sound approach to PVC and other chemical production. Despite these studies, PVC production and consumption continue at an astronomical pace. In fact, in 2011, nine years after the release of Blue Vinyl, Mossville, Louisiana, the predominately African American community right next door to Lake Charles, lost its case with the EPA to establish the community and its PVC plants as a Superfund Site. The EPA Superfund Strategy Recommendation on May 3, 2011 explained away both water and soil contamination as “within the range of the background for the area” or “naturally occurring.” With these justifications, the site score fell below the required 28.5. 

For us, however, this oversight implicates the EPA in the environmental injustice and racism suffered by the residents of Mossville, as well as the residents of Lake Charles and the thousands of PVC plant workers in the region, issues addressed with strong emotional appeal in Blue Vinyl. Helfand helps remove the blue vinyl siding from her parents’ home in preparation for new ecologically sound reclaimed wood. The last piece of the reclaimed wood is placed on the Helfand home with the only remaining emblem of blue vinyl as a penciled scrawl on the top piece. Helfand and her parents create warnings about PVC hazards from the blue vinyl, hooking it to Mardis Gras beads as a reminder of its Lake Charles, Louisiana origin. To spread the word about PVC hazards, the family gives away the beads with their message while pointing viewers to their My House is Your House campaign for green home construction.