As an industry leader, we believe that culture is a driver of innovation, growth and transformation. Building an inclusive culture at Standard enables us to attract a more diverse workforce and harness the power that comes from it. We know that a diverse workforce also gives us a competitive edge—strengthening relationships, improving collaboration and bringing an array of different backgrounds and opinions to spur creativity and innovation.

To further support employees, Standard and its operating companies have launched a number of employee networks. These employee-led communities regularly host events and create opportunities for employees to connect, learn and grow together.

The GAF Roofing Academy is an innovative training program that enables prospective workers to build the necessary skills to begin a career in commercial, residential, or solar roofing. Since its launch, the tuition-free national program has helped to increase the diversity of the roofing sector, targeting underrepresented populations including women, transitioning veterans, citizens re-entering the workforce and youth from under-resourced communities. Over the last three years, the GAF Roofing Academy has placed nearly 2,000 graduates in early-career roofing positions.

Standard regularly hosts volunteer events for employees to support the communities where we live and work, partnering with local nonprofit organizations. In 2022, employees packed 10,000 meals for elderly New Yorkers with Citymeals on Wheels, in addition to assembling activity kits for pediatric patients with Project Sunshine, serving lunches with Part of the Solution and packing more than 2,600 meals with New York Common Pantry. Standard is also proud to support New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for life-saving research in partnership with Cycle for Survival.

In addition, Standard offers additional volunteer time off to employees and makes donations to eligible non-profit organizations where employees have a demonstrated commitment, either through volunteering, fundraising activities or board service.

Combining a commitment to R&D and innovation with the global reach of our operations, U.S.-based GAF Energy is transforming the solar industry with Timberline Solar™, a game-changing nailable solar product that is installed like a traditional roof shingle. It optimizes power output and maximizes aesthetic appeal while remaining reliable, durable and cost-effective. With the extensive national contractor network of GAF, the largest roofing manufacturer in North America, we have the unique ability to scale this next-generation technology to generate "Energy from Every Roof"™.

Our aggregates business, SGI, is partnering with a number of universities and startups to study the ability of metabasalt fines—a byproduct created during the granule manufacturing process—to sequester carbon from the atmosphere when applied to agricultural soil.

Findings from a study conducted at the University of Illinois Energy Farm suggest that widespread adoption of enhanced weathering, using materials like crushed basalt, has the potential to contribute significantly to atmospheric carbon dioxide reduction, and field trial studies have shown that SGI’s basalt has the potential to increase crop yield in some cases.

Standard’s performance materials platform, Grace, is applying its industry-leading catalysts and materials technologies innovation to help customers meet their sustainability product needs and goals. Grace’s ActivCat® catalysts—which won the 2022 Chemical Week Global Innovation Award for the Most Innovative Speciality Chemicals Sustainable Products—are a major step in making plastic an environmentally-friendly option for commercial packaging. Grace’s silica solutions are used in a variety of applications, from a leading mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 to alternative diesel fuels refined from renewable sources.

As part of a continued focus on circularity, GAF developed the RoofCycle™ process, a patented manufacturing process used to produce asphalt shingles that contain post-consumer recycled shingle content. This process has the potential for significant impact on reducing waste across the roofing value chain.

Across our operating companies, we continually make operational improvements, from waste diversion and recycling to efforts that support product transparency and circularity, water efficiency, and reducing carbon emissions. By 2030, GAF aims to achieve an 80% waste diversion rate across all manufacturing plants—an objective that has already been achieved at seven plant locations nationwide as of 2022. At GAF’s plants in Shafter, CA, a 100% closed loop water system repurposes more than 5 million gallons of water annually, resulting in zero waste water discharge.

Our related investment platform, Standard Investments, takes a flexible and creative approach to investing that allows us to deploy capital into high-growth opportunities—including the technologies enabling the world to enter a lower-carbon future. Since the energy transition will require significant investment in physical infrastructure, we invest in startups to well-established companies that are developing scalable solutions, from using AI to accelerate the discovery of copper crucial to the green energy transition, to developing energy storage solutions for a more resilient grid, to building connectivity on the factory floor and more.

Standard has invested in partnerships to support critical global conservation projects, to preserve nature, protect wildlife and leverage natural climate solutions. Our support has enabled Conservation International (CI) to launch and expand their Nature for Climate strategy and initiative, including critical work to secure irreplaceable ecosystems, tackle deforestation, promote climate policies, and seek innovations in blue carbon. As part of their Nature-Based Climate Solutions strategy, CI launched a bold initiative to plant 73 million trees in the Brazilian Amazon, protecting an irrecoverable carbon ecosystem.