Sustainability doesn’t hinge on one characteristic or a small part of the product’s overall life cycle.  Claims of “sustainable manufacturing” only consider a limited window of the product’s environmental impact.  Claims relating to the “recyclability” of products that are never recycled are distractions from a clear-eyed evaluation of actual environmental impacts.

Vitrified clay pipe has been used in sanitary sewers for millennia (since the earliest sewers 6,000 years ago in Ephesus).  VCP is a ceramic.  It is inert.  Once properly installed it will not change or degrade over time.  Meaning that the lifecycle of an undisturbed pipeline is undetermined, but at a minimum, a few centuries is a reasonable expectation.

Water jetting pressures of more than twice that of any other pipe material are just the beginning. A wide variety of mechanical cleaning methods can be used in VCP lines.  Those options are completely unavailable when lesser materials are used.

Mechanical cleaning options can also be used to save water.

Preserving the design capacity of a gravity sanitary sewer line is more reliable and more efficiently accomplished when that line is constructed of VCP.  See our Allowable Cleaning Methods Chart for a full comparison of pipe materials and cleaning options.

Clay, Shale & Water.  That’s it.

The carbon footprint of VCP is a fraction of other sanitary sewer pipe materials.