By Jodi Paper

	Photo courtesy of JupiterImages 2007

In its fall 2006 newsletter, Cold Spring Granite of Cold Spring, Minn., referred to Kermit the Frog's "heartfelt ballad, 'It Ain't Easy Being Green'" and the company's "been-there-done-that course of empathy" with the little guy. The Natural Stone Council (NSC) Committee on Sustainability, whose members include representatives from stone companies from across the country, whistles a similar tune. However, the NSC has a more positive take on the future, particularly in relation to natural stone and its potential as a major player in the "green building" movement.

"Green building," a multi-industrial movement, is more than just a growing trend. By definition, "green or sustainable building is the practice of designing, constructing, operating, maintaining and removing buildings in ways that conserve natural resources and reduce pollution." For John Mattke, president of Cold Spring Granite and an NSC member, "Green building is one of the most significant and exciting developments in the construction industry in the past decade. Environmental responsibility, and a focus on improving the utilization of energy and resources in the creation of products used in the construction and life cycle of buildings, is good business," Mattke said.

Natural stone, as an abundant and recyclable resource, is an advantageous building material that easily lends itself to the green movement's goals.

The Natural Stone Council
Created in 2003, the NSC is a collaboration of natural stone businesses and trade associations. "The NSC Committee on Sustainability was formed to advance the position of natural stone as an environmentally responsible and preferred material in sustainable building," Mattke said.

Additionally, the NSC is working to correct any misconceptions the public and the industry's clients have concerning natural stone.

"There is such a wide and varied perception of stone and how it fits into the green movement," said Bill Eubank, a project manager at Luck Stone Corporation in Richmond, Va., and a member of the NSC Committee on Sustainability. "With quarrying practices, people scratch their heads wondering how green it can be. But we are saying that there is potential for responsible quarrying."

"Not all quarries are equal," said Kathy Spanier, who is the marketing manager at Cold Spring Granite and also a member of the NSC Committee on Sustainability, speaking to the concern that, because stone is extracted out of the ground and is a natural resource, it runs a high risk of becoming depleted. "Use of energy in [dimensional stone] extraction, as well as [dimensional stone] extraction practices, varies. We are looked at as [if we are] extracting a scarce resource from the earth. This just is not true; stone is a very abundant material."

In fact, the NSC Committee on Sustainability has developed a set of Best Practices, not only to diffuse any misconceptions about natural stone, but also to ensure that stone is quarried and fabricated in the greenest possible way. These Best Practices, which are guided by federal and state agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Quality, focus on air and water quality, safety and health, solid waste management, environmental impact studies, and quarry reclamation plans. And, while not all operations utilize these Best Practices, the natural stone industry and its associations encourage the sharing of Best Practices to move the industry forward to, shall we say, greener pastures.

USGBC and LEED
The NSC perceives that many of the misconceptions about natural stone stem from the lack of representation for the industry in the green building movement. "One way to [correct these misconceptions] is by getting the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) to recognize stone as a category, like wood, and not as a man-made material," Eubank said. "The NSC Committee on Sustainability is a unified effort to promote stone as a category."

The USGBC is the country's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of environmentally responsible creation and development of healthy and profitable buildings. According to the organization, commercial and residential buildings account for 65.2 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption, more than 36 percent of total U.S. primary energy use, and 30 percent of total U.S. greenhouse emissions. A green building is defined as an environmentally friendly structure that is designed and constructed in such a way as to reduce or eliminate its impact on both the environment and on its occupants.

To this end, the USGBC has developed a program called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), which is essentially a rating system by which a building's "greenness" is evaluated. This system was launched in 2000 as a guideline, but has quickly become a benchmark for the design and development of environmentally friendly projects. Within LEED, there are specific programs, including New Commercial Construction and Major Renovation projects, Existing Building Operations and Maintenance, Commercial Interiors projects, Core and Shell Development projects, Homes, Neighborhood Development, Guidelines for Multiple Building and On-Campus Building Projects, and LEED for Schools. "The primary focus of the stone industry on LEED is the New Construction and Major Renovation program," Eubank said.

The programs take what is referred to as a "whole-building" approach, meaning every aspect of a building, from the construction materials, such as insulation and carpeting, to the air conditioning systems. Five key areas of evaluation are: energy efficiency, materials selection, water savings, sustainable site development and indoor environmental quality. These categories are assigned points, leading to several certification levels — Certified, 26-32 points; Silver, 33-38 points; Gold, 39-51 points; and Platinum, 52+ points.

While stone is not yet a category, stone does contribute to a project's certification by qualifying for points. To qualify, the stone used in a project must be local or regional, meaning the materials, including extraction and manufacturing, must come from within 500 miles of the project. The higher percentage of the cost that comes from regionally harvested material, the more points that can be acquired.

Why Natural Stone?
There are several answers as to why stone is a natural fit for green building. To begin with, stone is a natural product with an enduring life cycle. "Many design professionals consider stone a green building material, not just because it can contribute directly to specific LEED credits, like regional materials and material reuse, but also because it is a natural, durable and low-maintenance product with an extremely long life cycle," Eubank said.

The natural stone industry is currently working on commissioning a study of the life cycle cost of natural stone. "A life cycle cost analysis calculates the cost of a system or product over its entire life span," said Garen Distelhorst, an NSC Committee on Sustainability member and accreditation manager at the Marble Institute of America in Cleveland. "It is the hypothesis of the natural stone industry that, when compared to competing products, natural stone will come out on top in terms of life cycle cost. The long life span and minimal upkeep required to keep natural stone beautiful make ongoing energy requirements minimal and, thus, would make it an attractive green building option with respect to life cycle cost."

Photo courtesy of JupiterImages 2007

Also, it's an abundant resource that can be recycled. "Stone can be ground up and used as aggregate in roads," said Spanier. "You can't say that about all building materials."

Stone is a highly sustainable material, especially when it has been quarried and manufactured locally, and by producers and fabricators that recycle water and product waste. Additionally, stone has been linked to improved indoor air quality and can contribute to greater energy efficiency.

For these reasons and many more, natural stone is gaining support from the green building community.

A 2006 survey of architects and landscape architects conducted by the NSC revealed that green certification has become increasingly important when considering a stone company's product. When asked how likely they would be to use a product from a company that has a more proactive approach to sustainability, 77 percent of those surveyed said they are most likely to go with a proactive company. "The survey was one of the first initiatives of the NSC Committee on Sustainability to assist us in understanding and validating the building industry's perception of stone and the approach we needed to take with natural stone in the green building movement," Spanier said. "In addition to the survey, we have also used trade events and [continuing education] presentations to confirm our information and direction."

The NSC Committee on Sustainability also organized an exhibit at the USGBC show, GreenBuild, in Denver in November 2006. "[Having the booth facilitated] great interaction with our market and created awareness for our effort as an industry," Spanier said.

Green Projects
An excellent example of a LEED-certified building is the Frisco Public Library in Frisco, Texas. The structure carries Silver LEED certification, due in large part to the fact that it is built from regional and remnant stone materials. "The reason we clad the building in stone is so it can be a 100-year old building," said Malcolm Holzman of Holzman Moss Architecture in New York. "There are very few other materials that can do that."

The fact that construction and demolition waste make up 40 percent of the total solid waste in the United States was another deciding factor; Holzman used "deconstructed" granite — or granite that is taken from one project and then reused on another. The use of deconstructed stone also made sense economically. "This is an excellent investment of taxpayer money," Holzman said.

Likewise, CarMax is shooting for a LEED Silver certification for its corporate headquarters in Richmond, Va. All of the stone used in the project is bluestone from Pennsylvania, quarried within 500 miles of the building, and therefore falls under LEED's regional requirements.

"The stone is used in a natural transition from the outside of the building to the inside," said NSC Committee on Sustainability member Dan Oullette, who is also director of sales at Luck Stone. Additionally, the building was "surgically" inserted into the site, a wooded area, without disturbing the natural surroundings.

"[This method] speaks to the problem of destroying the landscape," Oullette said. "Usually when people build, they clear the area first and then build." In this case, however, "they only cleared out a little beyond what the building would need for space."

Greener Pastures
No longer is the grass — or stone, as the case may be — greener only on the other side. These days, natural stone plays a major role in the proliferation of the green movement. Although its significance to sustainable building is not yet fully recognized, with the work of the NSC, it is only a matter of time.

As Mattke stressed: "Our goal is to educate the industry on Best Practices in the dimensional quarry and fabrication industry, eliminating misperceptions regarding the scarcity of stone, showing the environmental planning and care that is taken within the dimension stone quarrying industry, and assessing the life cycle and energy consumption impacts of stone versus other building material alternatives."

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