Sustainably Crafted Shingles Reduce Landfill Waste and Better Protect Your Home

By Cass Jacoby. 

Malarkey’s newest shingle innovation is better for the environment and delivers a superior performance.  

Wouldn't car tires make the perfect roof shingle? It might seem like used tires are a bizarre choice in roofing material. Still, because they are engineered for durability and weather resilience, they make a high-performing shingle for your roof. The anti-aging technology inherent in these materials adds protection from damaging UV rays and is more durable through extreme weather conditions.  

Most shingles are made with oxidized asphalt, a 100-year-old technology that uses oxygen and extreme heat to harden the asphalt deliberately. The process is super pollutive, contributing tons of annual air pollution. Because the process deteriorates asphalts' natural pliability, the shingles easily become brittle, crack and lose their protective granules.   

Shingles are constantly expanding and contracting with the temperature of your roof and weather extremes, which is why standard shingles struggle to persevere under the stress of all the movement.  

Malarkey innovated a better process and design, using polymers to create a polymer-modified asphalt (PMA). This process enhances the asphalts' natural weathering, chemically altering the shingle's core to deliver the best the properties of asphalt and rubber can provide.   

Because this formulation combines asphalt with synthetic polymers, it rubberizes the shingle. Malarkey then adds upcycled rubber and plastic polymers from used tires and water bottles to help extend shingle life. The upcycled materials improve the shingle's resilience and strength, creating an incredibly durable material that will last through extreme weather conditions like enhanced wind, rain and impact.  

By recycling these products, Malarkey has created an environmentally friendly shingle design improved by the technology inherent in the product. This innovative design upcycles used tires and post-consumer hard plastics to improve Malarkey products.   

Malarkey reports that each roof saves the equivalent of about five rubber tires and 2,000 plastic water bottles from sitting idly in a landfill or entering the ocean. The result – NEX® Polymer Modified Asphalt – is a better and cleaner technology that has fortified every Malarkey shingle. 

Have a question? AskARoofer.  

Find your local roofing contractor in the RoofersCoffeeShop® Contractor Directory.

About Cass  

Cass works as a reporter/writer for RoofersCoffeeShop and AskARoofer. When she isn’t writing about roofs, she is writing about movies for her master's degree and dancing with her plants.