"Building Green" With Dimension Stone
Green building or environmentally friendly construction with natural materials, is an idea that has been around for several decades. Energy price increases and the need for energy conservation when heating or cooling buildings have recently brought it to the fore. This resulted in the formation in 1993 of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), which has developed a building rating system called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Educational institutions (colleges, universities, grade, and high schools) are often requiring new buildings to be green, and a few jurisdictions (i.e., some cities) have some rules pushing green building. When "building green", dimension stone has a big advantage over steel, concrete, glazed glass and laminated plastics, whose productions are all energy intensive and create significant air and water pollution. As an entirely natural product, dimension stone also has an advantage over synthetic/artificial stone products, as well as composite and space-age materials. One LEED requirement provides that the dimension stone used in a green building be quarried within a 500-mile (800 km) radius of the building being constructed. This gives a clear advantage to domestic dimension stone, plus some quarried near the U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico. A current problem is how to consider stone quarried domestically, sent to China or Italy for finishing, and shipped back to be used in a project. When demolishing a structure, dimension stone is 100% reusable and can be salvaged for new construction, used as paving or crushed for use as aggregates. There are also "green" methods of stone cleaning either in development or already in use, such as removing the black gypsum crusts that form on marble and limestone by applying sulfate-reducing bacteria to the crust to gasify it, breaking up the crust for easy removal. See DSAN for updates on "building green" and dimension stone recycling.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in America is re-examining and will most likely update its "Green Guides" used to regulate green advertising claims. The updating will emphasize green building, including the products it involves, such as dimension stone. When the new requirements are finalized, the FTC will go after firms that violate the new requirements, in order to establish legal precedents.
The Natural Stone Council has a library of information on building green with dimension stone, including life-cycle inventory data for each major dimension stone, giving the amount of energy, water, other inputs, and processing emissions, plus some best practice studies (see below). In addition, it has shown ways that dimension stone can contribute LEED points, such as using a light-colored dimension stone to reduce heat-island effects, using dimension stone's thermal mass to impact indoor ambient air temperature thereby increasing energy efficiency, and especially by reusing dimension stone rather sending it to the landfill.
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