Check the Footprint, and the Foot

Granite and other stones don’t do well on the various grading scales of sustainability, due mainly to non-renewability of material, long lines of intercontinental transport and the perception that used stone materials head straight for the landfill.

So what’s on the correct list of materials? You’ll find a cornucopia of suggestions, although most center on quartz surfaces, cementious slabs and all sorts of products incorporating recycled items, including fly ash for concrete countertops.

Sure, in the sustainability game, stone has its drawbacks. But to hear some of the arguments against it, many of these ‘Net experts offer plenty of their own bias that I can only attribute to ignorance, stupidity or just plain talking out of their hats.

Yes, it’s going to take eons for the earth to replace the natural stone being quarried today. However, unlike fossil fuels, natural stone is being used, not consumed, and the known deposits of natural stone will likely meet world needs for more than a millennium (and whether we’ll need countertops then is anyone’s guess).

Natural stone is a material quarried and shipped worldwide. Much of the green grumbling comes from the carbon footprint, as in the amount of diesel fuel expended to quarry and ship. Nobody’s denying that stone requires energy to process and transport – but what about other hard surfaces?

It’s amazing how some online commentators name quartz as a green alternative without a) recognizing the energy needs of thermoforming the slabs, or b) realizing the transportation issues from the factory in offering up names like Caesarstone® (Israel), Silestone® (Spain) or Technistone® (Czech Republic). (Curiously, few mention Cambria in the same light, even though it’s U.S.-made)

And, to be fair, nobody seems to acknowledge the carbon footprint of recycled materials. It’s great that broken bottles or pre-consumer scrap isn’t going to landfills, but the reused materials still carries an environmental impact from initial manufacturing. If you’re going to howl about stone’s travel from quarry to kitchen, you need to acknowledge the process of obtaining and preparing recycled components.