How Dayside Windows and Doors Turns Vinyl Scrap Into a Sustainability Win with EPL Plastics

Every window and door that rolls off a manufacturing line leaves something behind: vinyl offcuts and trims. For most manufacturers, that leftover material is a cost of doing business and often a one-way trip to the landfill. Dayside Windows and Doors, a Brantford, Ontario manufacturer with more than 65 years in the industry, has built its name on a simple idea: if you're going to put your name on a window or door, it should be made right, built to last, and finished with the same care whether it's the first unit off the line or the ten-thousandth. That commitment to doing things properly didn't stop at the product, it extended to what happens to the material left over after it's built.

By partnering with us at EPL Plastics, a fellow Brantford company, Dayside now diverts its vinyl (PVC) scrap away from disposal and into a full recycling stream. Turning manufacturing byproduct into a resource instead of waste, and helping both companies meet real environmental goals in the process.

The Challenge

Dayside assembles its own windows in-house, ordering vinyl (PVC) profiles and cutting and trimming them to size for each custom build. That precision comes at a cost: every trimmed-to-fit window leaves behind offcuts and end pieces that can't go back into a finished product. Historically, offcuts like this are hard to deal with responsibly: they're bulky, they take up yard and warehouse space, and unlike some plastics, PVC isn't accepted by every recycler or municipal program.

Simply sending that material to landfill wasn't good enough for a company built on Canadian-made, long-lasting products, every Dayside window and door is custom-built for the customer's exact opening and manufactured in-house so quality can be guaranteed from the first cut to the final seal, and that same attention to detail carried over into how the company thought about its waste stream. Dayside needed a recycling partner nearby who could actually take vinyl scrap at volume, process it responsibly, and put it back into productive use, not just a company that says the right things about sustainability (see our breakdown of which plastics are actually recyclable for context on why PVC in particular is often left out of standard recycling streams).

The Solution

That's where we came in. Operating a 97,000-square-foot processing facility, we run full-service grinding, granulating, and reprocessing operations for manufacturers across the Greater Toronto area and North America. Rather than shipping scrap long distances or paying disposal fees, Dayside now sends its vinyl offcuts directly to us, where the material is:

Collected and sorted as part of our toll processing service
Ground and densified into a consistent, reusable form
Reprocessed into regrind or pelletized material suitable for reuse in manufacturing

Curious What Your Own Scrap Is Worth?

Dayside isn't the only manufacturer sitting on plastic scrap that could be reprocessed instead of landfilled. Our Plastic Savings Calculator lets any manufacturer estimate the cost savings of diverting their own plastic waste into a toll processing program, the same kind of program that now keeps Dayside's vinyl offcuts out of the landfill.

Part of a Bigger Vinyl Recycling Push in Ontario

Dayside's partnership with us also fits into a larger movement happening in the Canadian vinyl industry. We're a participant in Project Win-Finity, a Vinyl Institute of Canada initiative launched in 2025 as the first Canadian program built specifically to recycle post-consumer vinyl windows. The pilot, backed by partners including Formosa Plastics, the National Research Council of Canada, and Fenestration Canada, is working to prove out a full circular model for vinyl windows: collect old windows, separate the glass, and send the vinyl to processors like us to be reintroduced into new products.

Dayside's own scrap program runs alongside that broader industry effort, manufacturing offcuts today, post-consumer windows tomorrow, pointing toward a future where far less vinyl from the window and door industry ever reaches a landfill at all. It's also a good illustration of a distinction we've written about before: why industrial plastic scrap is so much easier to recycle than consumer plastic Dayside's clean, sorted offcuts are exactly the kind of material that keeps a true circular manufacturing loop running efficiently.

The Results

Vinyl scrap diverted from landfill on an ongoing basis as part of Dayside's regular manufacturing process
Reduced disposal costs by replacing landfill fees with a recycling partnership
Locally closed loop, with material staying within Ontario rather than traveling long distances overseas
Reprocessed vinyl reintroduced into manufacturing, supporting a circular economy for PVC materials
Sustainability Goals for a company whose products are already durable, energy efficient, and Canadian-made

Why Dayside Windows and Doors

Dayside has spent more than 65 years earning a reputation built on honesty, craftsmanship, and products made to handle a genuinely tough Canadian climate. Every window is assembled in-house, cut and trimmed to each customer's exact specifications rather than pulled off a generic assembly line. A level of hands-on attention that shows up in everything from tighter seals and better energy efficiency to a finished look that's built to last for decades, not just years. That same in-house control that lets Dayside guarantee the fit and finish of every unit also means the company knows exactly where its material comes from and, just as importantly, where its leftover material goes.

Partnering with us extends that same hands-on, no-shortcuts approach to sustainability: rather than outsourcing scrap to whoever will take it, Dayside chose a processor it could verify, visit, and hold to the same standards it applies to its own production. Dayside's decision towards recycling reflects how the company operates everywhere else carefully, deliberately, and with an eye on the long term.

Why EPL Plastics

We've built our business on being more than a landfill alternative. As a family-run operation processing plastic scrap for manufacturers across North America, we offer the grinding, granulating, and pelletizing capacity to turn vinyl offcuts into genuinely reusable material, not just a lower-guilt way to throw something away. For a manufacturer like Dayside, that expertise means vinyl scrap has somewhere real to go, backed by a processor with the infrastructure to handle it at scale, the kind of partnership we describe in Good Business Isn't Just Good for Us, where toll processing is framed as a win for the manufacturer's bottom line, our operation, and the environment all at once.

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*Manufacturers looking to reduce plastic waste and lower disposal costs can try the Plastic Savings Calculator or get in touch with us to learn how a toll processing partnership could work for their operation.*