Bendheim’s Channel Glass Becomes First To Receive Bird-Friendly Certification

We are pleased to announce that our Lamberts® glass is the first channel glass tested and certified as bird-friendly by the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), the preeminent authority on avian-friendly architecture. The announcement highlights the rising awareness and need for sustainable bird-friendly glass in architecture. Bendheim’s new Bird-Smart certification, the first for any channel glass, confirms our Lamberts® glass is visible to birds, helping them avoid collisions. It provides architects with a newly tested, safe glass choice for building facades.

Bird strike is a real and common hazard for today’s visually stunning, glass-enclosed buildings, and a potentially jarring experience for building occupants. It is estimated that up to a billion birds are killed each year in the U.S. alone, due to collisions with glass in built structures.

“Everyone has seen or heard a bird hit a window, but few realize how common it is – adding up to hundreds of millions of birds each year in the U.S. alone.”

The enormity of the ecological impact is enough that municipalities, including San Francisco, Oakland and Palo Alto (California), Highland Park and parts of Cook County (Illinois), Toronto (Ontario), as well as the state of Minnesota, have in recent years mandated or promoted bird-friendly architecture for new construction. Additional regulations aiming to reduce avian fatalities are being considered throughout North America.

Bendheim submitted our channel glass to the American Bird Conservancy for testing and Bird-Smart certification in order to assist architects designing buildings in locales requiring the use of bird-friendly glass, as well as those looking to avian-friendly architecture for its ecological and humanitarian benefits. Testing was carried out at the Pennsylvania Powdermill Nature Reserve flight tunnel facility, one of only three in the world, in conjunction with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. No birds were harmed during testing; please see this video for more information.

“Everyone has seen or heard a bird hit a window, but few realize how common it is – adding up to hundreds of millions of birds each year in the U.S. alone,” said Dr. Christine Sheppard, American Bird Conservancy’s Bird Collisions Campaign Manager. “By working with companies like Bendheim to evaluate their glass products, we are able to proactively reduce future collisions and prevent thousands of avoidable bird fatalities.”

Bloch Building – Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO by Steven Holl Architects and BNIM Architects. Photo by Roland Halbe.

Bendheim’s Lamberts® channel glass is used to create sweeping, virtually seamless glass walls exhibiting minimal framing. It can achieve facades of limitless widths and heights, including glass-to-glass corners and curves. The glass is produced in eight decorative textures, from the nearly transparent Clarissimo™ to the heavily obscuring Ice™ and Piccolo®. Lamberts® channel glass contains up to 60 percent recycled glass, including up to 40 percent post-consumer content.  It is the only channel glass manufactured in an environmentally friendly, oxygen-fired furnace.