The Color of … What?

December 30, 2009

In a way, natural stone’s getting the same treatment when it comes to being green. Bring a product to the marketplace that’s natural and has the potential to last longer than any manufactured item, and you’ll find plenty of competitors being invited to cut in front of you … if you’re not told to leave altogether.

Some of this also comes from the byword of sustainability, which seemingly can be cut to fit anyone’s fashion. And, again, natural stone often finds itself cut out.

How natural stone fits in terms of the green building movement makes for a good argument. As someone who works with words for a living, though, I’m starting to focus less on the definitions … and more on who’s writing them.

A recent ‘Net search brought up a news release from a green surface manufacturer on a new designation for its product. The write-up detailed the exclusivity of this new seal-of-approval for sustainability; I’d certainly heard of the product, but not the group awarding the certification.

For the curious, Google is a fatal addiction. Someone can ask an innocent question – “Hey, do they still sell Clark® Bars at the store?” – and after an hour I’ve found the confection’s history, created a ringtone of an old Clark advertising jingle, followed another childhood memory with U-No® bars, and finished with an associated look at the grand card game of Uno® (invented, by the way, by a Hungarian barber in 1971 and available in more than 115 custom card printings.)

So, I burned up most of an afternoon on Web searches to get a better idea on who’s saying what about green building groups and designations. The result almost made me wish I’d stuck to Clark Bars.

Before continuing, I’d like to note that the green/sustainability movement is chock-full of smart, well-meaning people looking to make a difference in how we handle resources now and in the future. On the whole, there’s no cause to knock the intent and effort of the various groups and organizations.

A lot of what I found out on the ‘Net looks official, down to specific standards and definitions. All of it looks very, very official.

That’s where my concern comes in: It isn’t official. There are plenty of ideas and concepts here, but all are self-generated. The various sectors offer advice – very good advice, in most cases – but it’s not law and statute. (Not yet, anyway.)

Who’s producing this advice? In the case of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) – the group behind the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Green Building Rating System™ – it’s done by committee. A bevy of committees, as shown at their www.usgbc.org Website, with a strenuous process in developing very technical guidelines and checklists for meeting certification levels.

But, it’s not the law, which is something the USGBC itself points out, calling it the “voluntary and technically rigorous LEED process.”

Then there’s the National Green Building Program™, offered through the National Association of Home Builders. While not as widely known as LEED, this set of standards – also voluntary – also includes specifications and checklists for residential structures.

The NAHB’s green push isn’t quite as detailed (or draconian, depending on your viewpoint) on certain aspects, such as materials. While it encourages use of recycled goods, it doesn’t set limits as stringent as the 500-mile production-delivery radius.

However, the NAHB also moves more to official status, as the group also collaborated with others in getting approval from the American National Standard Institute (ANSI). for ICC-700-2008 – the National Green Building Standard. The result isn’t the law of the land, but it does move closer to a building-code-level document. (It also seems to leave plenty of room for any countertop material you like, including natural stone.)

Neither the USGBC nor the NAHB recommends specific brand-name products. That’s where other concerns pop up with other green definitions, such as the rather odd life of Pierre de Roches from Serrastone SA in Limoges, France.

Pierre de Roches popped up a few years ago as the first stone product certified with the green-standard Cradle-to-Cradle^SM designation from McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC). The term is applied to materials that can be recycled, in some fashion, again and again, creating a perpetual use.

The process (as described in June in my Editor’s Blog) combined gypsum and waste-rock aggregates to form hardened building blocks, using high pressure and no cement or resin, but in a water-based mix subjected to high pressure. Local plants could produce the material, eliminating long-distance transportation.

Investors plugged $22 million into the process. And, it gained the Cradle-to-Cradle badge; you can still find Pierre de Roches on some U.S. sustainable-materials specifier lists.

Only one problem: Serrastone SA never got the material to market. It couldn’t develop a commercially viable process for a worldwide network of plants; earlier this year, investors refused to provide additional funding, and the company went into receivership.

Pierre de Roches may be the rare exception in sustainable/green products, but it also shows a problem; this is still a developing market. Defining what’s green with standards and designations often skews to the new in an effort to look dynamic and cutting-edge, sometimes with unforeseen consequences.

Meanwhile, there’s old-fashioned, time-tested natural stone, with a not-quite-cool identity but plenty of potential. The Natural Stone Council’s efforts to integrate stone into the green building discussion are making headway; they also need continuing support.

Natural stone can bring a lot to the party when it comes to green efforts. We’re available.

Emerson Schwartzkopf can be reached at emerson@stonebusiness.net. You can also read his regular blog at Stone Business Online and stonebusinesseditor.wordpress.com. And don’t forget to keep up with Stone Business on Twitter (StoneBizMag) and Facebook (search: Stone Business Magazine).