Sustainability: Setting the Standard in Stone
“They were ahead of the game comparative to NSC at first,” she says. “They knew this market was being driven by green, and so they started developing education and research programs to address those issues.”
As interest in marketing stone as a green product grew in this country, Vierra was asked to coordinate efforts between the various stone entities, including NSC and the Marble Institute of America. Today, she says a lot of her efforts go toward educating the architectural community about the sustainable characteristics of stone, and the questions they need to ask stone suppliers.
“I talk a lot about the life cycle of stone, including the steps along the way, from the quarry to transportation, and where the environmental impacts can take place,” she explains. “And, we talk about how they, as architects, can minimize them.”
One of her important messages is to get people thinking beyond the 500-mile radius required by LEED.
“People will say, ‘Oh, it’s so terrible that you’re going to transport stone from Europe or South America,’” Vierra says. “But, I try to get them to think about the fact that they’re going to have a one-time transportation impact if they specify a long life cycle of 75 or 100 years for the building. Plus, they’re using a material that’s durable and is low-maintenance, and it doesn’t off-gas. I try to help designers balance all these things.”
Particularly with stone coming from Europe, quarriers have a long tradition of supplying stone for projects, and centuries-old buildings that prove stone’s long-term durability. However, it goes beyond that.
“If you go to a stone-fabrication plant there, they’re using natural daylight,” she says. “They’re using the water they find in the mountains, recycling it, and putting it back into the stream when they’re done because they’re not adding chemicals. There’s very little waste generated; and because of the regulations on how quarries are reclaimed, managed, and closed, they’re becoming very savvy in terms of how they utilize all their materials.”
And, because so much of the stone sold in this country is imported, Vierra says quarriers and fabricators worldwide realize that if the U.S. has standards for stone production, they’ll need to follow.
“It will only serve them in the long run, and most of the people I talk with around the world are in favor of being involved with sustainability for the stone industry,” she says. “They think it makes a lot of sense.”
How long it will take to have a standard that the marketplace responds to still isn’t clear. Ecoform’s Geibig believes a standard will be done by sometime next year. What happens after that is in the hands of the industry, he says.
“A few of the leading manufacturers will certify their stone to its standards early on, so the marketplace will be exposed to that,” Geibig says. “Then, the stone industry is going to have to put some effort into marketing it. People aren’t going to wake up one day and know what it means.”
Geibig hopes the stone industry would then follow in the footsteps of the FSC and what he calls “the tremendous job” it did getting a certification plan in place and its standards known within the green building movement.
As the economy improves, quarriers expect green issues to become bigger with builders and their clients at all levels.