"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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Famous quotes containing the words building, green, dimension and/or stone:
“The artist must be an egotist because, like the spider, he draws all his building material from his own breast. But just the same the artist alone among men knows what true humility means. His reach forever exceeds his grasp. He can never be satisfied with his work. He knows when he has done well, but he knows he has never attained his dream. He knows he never can.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)
“Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds and other seas,
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade,”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
“Le Corbusier was the sort of relentlessly rational intellectual that only France loves wholeheartedly, the logician who flies higher and higher in ever-decreasing circles until, with one last, utterly inevitable induction, he disappears up his own fundamental aperture and emerges in the fourth dimension as a needle-thin umber bird.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)
“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)