Sustainability: Setting the Standard in Stone

To create standards that are credible and relevant and will subsequently enjoy the same respect as the Forestry Stewardship Council’s (FSC) certified hardwood program isn’t an easy task. The NSC hired several consultants to help with various aspects of the work, including Jack Geibig, president of Knoxville, Tenn.-based Ecoform.

Geibig freely admits he was one of the misinformed public who equated quarrying with mining until he started visiting quarries around the country.

“We visited something in the order of 30 or 35 quarries around the country, looking at quarries of different types,” he says. “We looked at marble and granite and limestone quarries, in a lot of different configurations. We did that for the purpose of benchmarking the operational practices and environmental impacts of quarries to see if there were any commonalities to the different types – or significant differences.”

Click photo to enlargeOne universal property Geibig says he found: While quarrying did have environmental impacts, they were small compared with the function the stone serves.

“We kept asking ourselves, what would be the alternative if we didn’t use stone?” he explains. “When you go through that mental exercise, stone compares very favorably to other materials that would have to be grown or produced.”

While that’s the good news, Geibig says people who are concerned about green construction are probably asking other questions in an attempt to compare one product with another.

“They’re asking questions of all building-material producers,” he says. “They want to know that it not only was produced in a sustainable way, but also that it won’t be introducing toxins into the environment as part of its production. In that sense, stone has to compare favorably with materials outside the industry if it wants to have an important part of the marketplace.”

Geibig also points out that while LEED is probably the best-known program for rating the “greenness” of a new or remodeled building, it’s not the only one. He cites the Cascadia Green Building Council (a charter member of the USGBC), which is developing its own criteria based on how materials are produced.

Additionally, there’s the Living Building Challenge, developed by one of the founders of the Cascadia Green Building Council and now administered by the International Living Building Institute™.

“Its basic concept is that, regardless of where you build, a building should be able to exist within that environment without negatively impacting the environment,” Geibig explains. “For instance, if you were to build in the desert, your energy demands would be irrelevant if you put solar collectors on the building and design the building properly – but the water restrictions would become extremely tight.”

RAISING THE BAR

While it would be good for certain U.S. quarriers if LEED’s 500-mile radius reigned as the only green standard, much of the stone used in this country is imported … and a global perspective is necessary.

Helping provide that to the NSC’s efforts is Stephanie Vierra, president of the Gaithersburg, Md.-based Vierra Design & Education Services LLC. Vierra first became involved in the educating people about “green” stone for Veronafiere, the producers of the Marmomacc trade event in Verona, Italy.