MIA Opens Sustainability Fund

The MIA’s Natural Stone Sustainability Fund, announced yesterday, will raise money for the NSC’s sustainability initiative. The fund will also defray MIA costs of its own sustainability efforts, including a green advertising campaign, the creation of natural-stone sustainability CEU programs, the development of educational resources and much more.

“Ultimately, it will help the MIA to further develop a case for natural stone being viewed as an environmentally preferred, sustainable building material,” said MIA President Brett Rugo.

In the past few years, the NSC gathered and developed data to make a credible case for natural stone as a sustainable building material. Much of this work substantiating the stone industry’s environmental footprint, through scientific means, has been done by the University of Tennessee’s Center for Clean Products (CCP), a neutral third party.

“MIA, with over 1,700 member firms, is raising funds from across the U.S. and around the globe to not only continue to support the work of NSC on sustainability, but also to educate designers and communicate to all a message about the many attributes of natural stone as a sustainable building material,” said Rugo, who’s also president of Rugo Stone LLC in Lorton, Va.

To facilitate the fund-raising effort, MIA has established the MIA Natural Stone Sustainability Honor Roll ,and will recognize and honor supporters at the levels of Platinum ($10,000 and above); Gold ($5,000-$10,000); Silver ($2,000-$5,000); and Bronze ($500-$2,000).

“With MIA’s global reach among quarriers, distributors, contracting installers, fabricators and others, we feel the association can really help in raising funds that will enable this effort to be accelerated,” Rugo added.

Expenditures from the fund will be overseen by MIA’s executive committee.

Contributions can be sent to the Marble Institute Natural Stone Sustainability Fund in Cleveland.

Get the best in insightful and informed coverage of the stone industry every month with Stone Business magazine. Sign up for a free subscription (or renew your current account) and don’t miss a single issue – just click here.