It is common knowledge that windows can be the biggest sources of air leaks and heat loss in a home. It is true that even the most high-performance windows compromise a home’s overall performance, and that’s even worse if they are improperly installed. However, when windows are approached as key components of a building enclosure—that is, designed with appropriate orientation, glazing specs, and sizing, among other things—it’s possible to significantly minimize the energy penalty, or potentially do even better than that.

As GBA regulars Allison Bailes and Martin Holladay concluded in the comments of this article by Bailes from 2012, the maxim that “A good window still makes a poor wall” isn’t always true. And several years prior, Holladay offered his own findings for how the right glazing solutions can “gather more energy than they lose.” The industry has made impressive strides in terms of product performance, but business accountability still has a long way to go.

With that, it is somewhat disheartening that most large window companies today are operating on business-as-usual mode, manufacturing durable products with standard low-emissive (low-e) glass (which reflects heat in the summer and traps heat in the winter) but paying little attention to the broader environmental impacts of what they produce and how.

Recently I connected with George Bandy Jr., the newly appointed chief sustainability officer at Andersen Corporation and the first person to hold that role with the company. In the nine months since he was hired, Bandy has been immersing himself in every aspect of Andersen’s existing sustainability practice, from material sourcing and product performance to waste-diversion strategies and renewable energy use. This process is ongoing; it’s one Bandy refers to as “seeking to understand before seeking to be understood.” In the interim, Bandy’s very presence (and role) within Andersen speaks volumes about the company’s desire to be a cut above the rest.

Balancing efficiency and circularity

Bandy isn’t new to this game. Prior to joining Andersen he served as head of worldwide circular economy at Amazon, chief sustainability officer at flooring company Mohawk Group, and VP of sustainability at Interface (working alongside the incomparable Ray Anderson), among other roles. Through the years, he recalls how people’s priorities have changed.

“People want a closed-loop, circular system. Well, that means you’ll have to tolerate certain things,” he said. “Or they want something that’s going to last for 50 years. OK, that means some level of durability. Or they want something that has a high level of efficiency. People are looking for a silver bullet; you have to evolve to get to that point. Right now, there’s no way you’re going to have all those things in one.”

Bandy is fond of invoking the phrase “The best product is the one you don’t have to replace.” That is to say, the best product is highly durable and efficient. But then, in the right context, one could apply those qualities to asbestos. Thus, it isn’t lost on him that those attributes alone don’t necessarily make something sustainable in the truest sense. Instead, he wants to achieve what he calls “purposeful, circular sustainability,” wherein secondary waste materials are recirculated into production streams and end up yielding a high-performance product.

He goes on to highlight key innovations, like Andersen’s proprietary Fibrex material. This composite vinyl alternative is composed of 40% wood fiber by weight, sourced from internal wood-waste streams, plus 60% thermoplastic polymer, also partially from reclaimed sources. The company claims that its Fibrex windows are twice as strong as vinyl, block thermal transfer “nearly 700 times better” than aluminum, and retain their rigidity and stability in all climates. Fibrex is a key component in Andersen’s fastest growing 100 Series double-hung windows, which rolled out to limited regional markets only last February. Production has already exceeded 10 million windows.

Going line by line

Andersen Corporation is not pivoting to so-called sustainability on Bandy’s account. In April 2024 the Minnesota-based company committed to using 100% clean energy from renewable sources to power three of its facilities—the subsidiary Renewal by Andersen’s facility in Cottage Grove; its research, development, and innovation (RD&I) facility in Bayport, and its corporate headquarters in Oak Park Heights—plus all employee EV charging stations.

Bandy will assuredly help lead similar large, public-facing gestures on the company’s behalf. But for now he remains focused on a more nuanced set of tasks. We are “looking at processes and going line by line” in all our facilities, he says. “We’re looking at ways to repurpose and re-source materials back into supply chains. Everything that we can keep inside our loop to make more materials we want to try to utilize, or at least send back to suppliers … for them to add value inside the supply chain, whether it’s ours or someone else’s.”

This line-by-line process also extends to conducting life-cycle assessments (LCAs) on some of its best-sellers, scaling up and diversifying glass recycling practices, and getting operations as close to zero-waste as possible. It’s an arduous task to collect and audit data on how much wood, aluminum, fiberglass, vinyl, and glass is wasted, reclaimed, or otherwise within a $3 billion, 13,000+ employee company. Nonetheless, Bandy and his growing team are putting in the work.

“Glass is one of those products that stays in a landfill for an extended period,” Bandy says. “How do we create an end-of-life disposition where we can start recycling that glass back into glass?” He acknowledges that given the wear and tear on products such as old windows that need replacing, finding tier 1 solutions like repurposing old glass to make new windows may not be viable. So he points to so-called tier 2 solutions that use cullet (crushed or imploded glass) to produce glassphalt and aggregate blends for all manner of highway and transit-related uses. “I wouldn’t even call it downcycling,” he says. “It’s an extension of keeping it in the built environment and extending the life of those materials even longer.”

A visit to the factory

Bandy fondly recalls his first walk-through on the factory floor of an Andersen facility. During his job interview, he was led on a tour by CEO Chris Galvin and senior VP for R&D Brandon Berg. While walking the floor, Bandy recalls encountering a large board on wheels.

“On this board was every material that goes into making a window,” he said. “There was a flange, metal, locks, hinges, everything. And at the top was the word ‘Sustainability.’ It was so impressive to me that someone had taken the time to build this board. Because you have so many different languages being spoken here and so many different kinds of people who are looking at this work.”

He marvels at the fact that an employee working the production line took the initiative to communicate sustainability principles in a visual way, and in doing so invited their coworkers to consider the larger value stream of what the company is manufacturing.

“Those are things that you need in order to move the needle!” he says. Bandy also cites this moment when he knew there was something distinct about Andersen’s corporate culture. After Bandy was hired, he sought out the board’s maker, a production line operator named Lindsey, and invited her to join his team.

The team continues to grow, and the audit is nearing completion. If there’s a throughline to Bandy’s work with Andersen thus far, it’s a concerted effort to apply systems thinking to the whole operation. He wants his colleagues, from the C-suite to the factory floor, to see every building block in a cyclical context.

“A forest sustains and feeds itself,” he said. “So how do you create a factory like a forest?”

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Justin R. Wolf is a Maine-based writer who covers green building trends and energy policy. He is the author of Healing Ground, Living Values: Stanley Center for Peace and Security, published by Ecotone.