BIRD FRIENDLY GLASS

BIRD FRIENDLYGLASS

Why bird-friendly glass is so important?

Bird-friendly glass products are becoming increasingly vital in modern architecture and construction, primarily driven by growing awareness of the devastating impact of bird-window collisions and evolving sustainability standards. In essence, bird-friendly glass is no longer just a niche product; it's becoming a necessary and proactive solution for responsible and sustainable building, ensuring the safety of avian populations while still allowing for innovative and transparent architectural designs.

BIRD FRIENDLYGLASS

OUR PROCESS

Millet Glass Industry offers specialized bird-friendly glass designed to reduce bird collisions, ensuring both aesthetic appeal and environmental responsibility in modern building design.

Millet Glass Industry offers a wide range of bird-friendly glass solutions, utilizing advanced manufacturing facilities for screen printing, digital printing, and other treatments. We can customize these methods to create effective and aesthetically pleasing glass that helps prevent avian collisions. We also source specialized bird-friendly glass from industry-leading suppliers like Vitro, Guardian, and Saint-Gobain. By incorporating state-of-the-art processes and materials, we address the growing demand for sustainable and avian-safe building materials. Our goal is to break up the illusion of clear passage or reflected habitat, ensuring birds perceive the glass as a solid barrier and avoid potentially fatal collisions. Here are the different processes available to create bird friendly glass products.

BIRD FRIENDLYGLASS

THERMAL TREATMENTS

Millet Glass Industry's advanced thermal treatment capabilities play a vital role in the production of their bird-friendly glass.

At Millet Glass Industry, we apply advanced thermal treatments to our glass to enhance its performance as a bird-safe solution. By using high temperatures, we can fuse permanent visual markers, such as frits and ceramic inks, directly onto the glass surface. This ensures the bird-friendly patterns are durable, weather-resistant, and aesthetically integrated, meeting the diverse demands of modern architecture. Our expertise is complemented by our comprehensive heat treatment capabilities, allowing us to offer bird-friendly glass solutions with superior longevity. Here are the thermal treatments available for bird-friendly glass.

BIRD FRIENDLYGLASS

CONFIGURATIONS

Millet Glass Industry offers versatile configurations for its bird-friendly glass allowing architects to specify bird-safe solutions across diverse building applications.

• First Surface (Exterior) Placement: Research consistently shows that bird-friendly patterns are most effective when placed on the first (outermost) surface of the glass, as this is where birds encounter the visual cue and where reflections are most intense.
• Pattern Spacing: The "2x2 rule" (patterns spaced no more than 2 inches apart vertically and/or 4 inches horizontally) is a widely recognized guideline for effective bird deterrence. Tighter spacing generally offers greater protection.
• Substrate (Glass Type): Bird-friendly patterns can be applied to various glass substrates, including clear, low-iron (extra-clear), or tinted glass, depending on the desired aesthetic and performance.
• Compatibility with Low-E Coatings: Modern bird-friendly glass is designed to be compatible with energy-efficient Low-E coatings, allowing architects to achieve both sustainability and avian safety goals without compromise.

BIRD FRIENDLYGLASS

APPLICATIONS

Millet Glass Industry offers versatile bird-friendly glass applications for virtually any structure. From safeguarding building facades and high-rise towers to securing glass railings. Millet's innovative glass ensures that modern design protects avian life by significantly reducing collisions.

Bird-friendly glass is increasingly becoming a standard in modern architecture, driven by growing environmental awareness and expanding legislation in various jurisdictions (like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Toronto). Its applications are broad, wherever transparent or reflective glass poses a collision risk to birds.  The overall goals of Bird-Friendly Glass applications is to:

• Reduce avian mortality by significantly decreasing the number of bird collisions with glass, protecting local and migratory bird populations.

• Meet Regulatory Requirements by complying with existing and emerging bird-friendly building codes and standards (e.g., those from the American Bird Conservancy, LEED, or specific municipal bylaws).

• Promote Sustainable Design by integrating environmental stewardship with modern architectural aesthetics, contributing to green building certifications and a positive ecological footprint.

• Balance Aesthetics and Functionality by providing effective bird deterrence without unduly compromising views, natural light, or the desired architectural appearance, often with subtle patterns that are barely visible to humans from a distance.

Here are the key applications of bird-friendly glass:

BIRD FRIENDLYGLASS

SPECIFICATIONS

Millet Glass Industry's bird-friendly glass adheres to recognized standards for avian safety, featuring precise patterns such as dots or lines applied to the first surface of the glass for optimal bird deterrence.

Millet Glass Industry offers high-performance bird-friendly glass solutions, expertly designed to mitigate avian collisions while maintaining aesthetic appeal. Our advanced fabrication capabilities allow for impressive dimensions ensuring that even the largest architectural visions can incorporate effective bird protection.

Key specifications

To effectively prevent bird collisions, bird-friendly glass must meet specific design and performance criteria, primarily focused on making the glass visible to birds. These specifications are increasingly being adopted into building codes and voluntary guidelines worldwide. Millet Glass Industry's bird-friendly glass is engineered to meet these rigorous specifications, offering architects and builders reliable, high-performance solutions that contribute to a safer environment for avian populations while fulfilling modern design and energy efficiency requirements. Here are the key specifications for bird-friendly glass:

1. • Visual Markers: The most common and highly effective method involves applying patterns to the glass surface. These patterns break up the illusion of clear passage or reflective habitat, signaling to birds that the glass is a solid barrier.
   • "2x2 Rule" (Preferred Standard): This is the most stringent and widely recommended guideline. It dictates that patterns must be spaced no more than 2 inches (approx. 5 cm) apart horizontally and/or vertically. This spacing ensures that even smaller birds, which are most vulnerable to collisions, perceive the pattern as a solid obstacle they cannot fly through.
   • "2x4 Rule" (Alternative for some applications): For some larger species or specific design situations, patterns spaced no more than 2 inches horizontally and 4 inches vertically may be considered. However, the 2x2 rule offers broader protection.
   • Pattern Element Size: Individual pattern elements (dots, lines, shapes) should be a minimum of 1/4 inch (6 mm) in diameter for dots or 1/8 inch (3 mm) wide for lines to ensure sufficient visibility.
   • Contrast: The pattern must offer sufficient contrast against the glass, both when viewed against light and dark backgrounds, and under varying lighting conditions.
   • UV Reflective Patterns: Some bird-friendly glass incorporates patterns that reflect ultraviolet (UV) light. Since birds can see in the UV spectrum, these patterns are highly visible to them, often remaining largely invisible to humans. However, their effectiveness can vary depending on bird species and light conditions (e.g., less effective for raptors or on overcast days).

1. • Exterior (First) Surface: Crucially, the bird-friendly pattern must be applied to the outermost surface (Surface 1) of the glass panel, whether it's monolithic or part of an insulated glass unit (IGU). This is where birds encounter the glass first and where reflections are most pronounced. Patterns on interior surfaces (Surface 2, 3, or 4 in an IGU) are generally ineffective as reflections from the exterior obscure them.

1. • Integrated Solutions: The most reliable bird-friendly glass solutions feature patterns that are permanently integrated into the glass itself. This is commonly achieved through processes like ceramic fritting (where ceramic inks are fused to the glass during tempering), acid etching, or laser etching. These methods ensure the pattern is highly durable, resistant to weathering, abrasion, cleaning, and UV degradation, lasting the lifetime of the building.
   • Avoidance of Temporary Solutions: While films or decals can be used for retrofitting existing buildings, for new construction, permanent, integrated solutions are preferred for long-term effectiveness and minimal maintenance.

1. • Energy Efficiency (Low-E Coatings): Bird-friendly glass must be compatible with low-emissivity (Low-E) coatings, which are essential for building energy performance. Typically, the Low-E coating is strategically placed on an interior surface (e.g., Surface 2 or 3 of an IGU) to ensure the exterior bird-friendly pattern remains fully visible and effective.
   • Acoustic Performance, Safety, and Security: Bird-friendly patterns can be incorporated into laminated glass units, providing additional benefits like sound attenuation, enhanced safety (glass holds together when broken), and security.
   • Overall Reflectance: Some specifications also consider the overall exterior reflectance of the glass assembly (excluding the visual markers), aiming for lower reflectance to minimize the mirror effect.

1. • Tunnel Testing: Many bird-friendly glass products undergo rigorous testing in specialized flight tunnels (e.g., by the American Bird Conservancy - ABC). Birds are presented with a choice between clear glass and a patterned test sample.
   • Threat Factor (TF): Based on tunnel testing, a "Threat Factor" (TF) is assigned. This indicates the percentage of birds that attempt to fly towards the test pattern. A lower TF signifies higher effectiveness (e.g., TF of 20 means 80% of birds avoided the patterned glass). The ABC generally defines "bird-friendly" materials as having a Threat Factor of 30 or less.
   • Prescriptive vs. Performance Paths: Building codes often allow for either a "prescriptive path" (adhering to rules like the 2x2 spacing) or a "performance path" (using products with a certified Threat Factor).

BIRD FRIENDLYGLASS

QUALITY GUIDELINES & CERTIFICATIONS

Bird-friendly guidelines provide essential criteria for building design and glass specifications, ensuring structures are visible to birds and mitigate deadly collisions, a commitment proudly met by Millet Glass Industry's innovative products.

While many bird-friendly building guidelines are established by organizations like the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and adopted by municipalities (e.g., New York City, Toronto), the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International plays a crucial role in developing standardized test methods and specifications for materials, including glass. This proposed standard aims to provide a standardized test method to quantify how likely a material is to be detected by approaching birds. It will allow manufacturers like Millet Glass Industry to provide a consistent, quantifiable material characteristic (a "Threat Factor") for consideration by designers, specifiers, and consumers. While ASTM is formalizing the testing, the core principles of effective bird-friendly glass, which Millet Glass Industry adheres to, are consistently found across most guidelines:

• Visual Markers: Patterns (dots, lines, frit, etching) applied to the glass that are visible to birds.

• Spacing: Crucially, patterns must be spaced no more than 2 inches (5 cm) apart horizontally and/or vertically (the "2x2 rule").

• Size: Elements should be at least 1/4 inch (6 mm) in diameter for dots or 1/8 inch (3 mm) wide for lines.

• Exterior Surface Placement: The pattern must be on Surface 1 (the outermost surface) of the glass panel to be effective against reflections and transparency.

• Durability: Patterns should be permanent and integrated into the glass (e.g., through tempering with ceramic frit, acid-etching, or laser etching) to withstand weathering and cleaning.

• Threat Factor (Performance-Based): Products are assessed for their ability to deter birds, often quantified by a Threat Factor where lower numbers (e.g., TF ≤ 30 or ≤ 25) indicate higher effectiveness.

Municipal and Regional Regulations:

• • New York City (Local Law 15): Requires bird-friendly glass up to 75 feet above grade and on any structure above a green roof for new construction and major renovations. It often references performance-based Threat Factors.
  • San Francisco: Has stringent bird-friendly design guidelines, often referencing ABC standards.
  • Toronto (Green Standard): Incorporates bird-friendly requirements into its green building standard.
  • Oakland, Chicago, Vancouver, and the State of California also have specific guidelines or regulations.

• • Which areas of a building require bird-friendly glass (e.g., lower floors, transparent corners, glass railings, areas facing natural habitats).
  • Which methods are acceptable (e.g., prescriptive patterns, or products with a certified Threat Factor).

• Meet or exceed the "2x2 Rule" for pattern spacing on Surface 1.
• Have a low Material Threat Factor (TF ≤ 30, ideally lower) as determined by recognized testing bodies like the ABC (and potentially future ASTM standards).
• Be designed to comply with specific local building codes or green building standards (like LEED or CSA A460) where applicable.

BIRD FRIENDLYGLASS

SUPPLIERS

Millet Glass Industry collaborates with leading glass manufacturers and technology providers to source and fabricate its high-quality bird-friendly glass.

BIRD FRIENDLYGLASS

FEATURED PROJECTS

Millet Glass Industry has successfully contributed to numerous bird-friendly projects, integrating their specialized glass into various architectural designs to reduce avian collisions.

Millet Glass Industry has established itself as a trusted supplier of high-quality bird-friendly glass for a wide range of significant architectural projects. Our dedication to avian safety, energy efficiency, and clear aesthetics makes our specialized glass the preferred choice for numerous commercial and residential buildings. We consistently demonstrate our ability to meet diverse and demanding project requirements with reliable and high-performing solutions that protect feathered inhabitants.