Stone and Green Building

Best Practices

The Natural Stone Council (NSC) is committed to supporting sustainable initiatives and innovations at all levels of the production of Genuine Stone® products. As such, best practices of the industry have been identified and these voluntary guidance documents created to provide assistance in implementing environmentally-preferable operations. Note: The NSC is currently reviewing and updating these Best Practices (May 2011).

• Best Practice: Transportation
• Best Practice: Solid Waste Management
• Best Practice: Water Consumption, Treatment, and Reuse
• Best Practice: Site Maintenance and Quarry Closure

Case Studies

Genuine Stone® products inherently have some environmentally-preferable characteristics. The case studies highlight these positive attributes of stone and its application as a green building product.

• Case Study: Application of Green Building Certification Programs to Natural Stone
• Case Study: Durability of Stone Flooring in High Traffic Areas
• Case Study: The Use of Reclaimed Stone in Building Construction
• Case Study: Solar Reflectance of Natural Stone

LCI Datasets

Life-cycle inventories have been established for granite, limestone, sandstone, and slate quarrying and processing operations. These data will serve a multitude of functions, including the ability to:

• Characterize the environmental profile of natural stone industry operations by providing an estimate of embodied energy, water consumption, and material resource utilization per ft3 of stone extracted and produced;
• Identify improvement areas for industry operations;
• Assist in establishing best practices of industry operations against which improvement can be measured; and
• Feed material fact sheets and other documents useful for the stone and design communities.

These reports are provided below Note that these documents are updates to earlier versions (v1) posted in August 2008. Changes from v1 are detailed in each report.

• LCI Dataset: Granite
• LCI Dataset: Limestone
• LCI Dataset: Sandstone
• LCI Dataset: Slate

Material Fact Sheets

Designers are more frequently being asked to identify green building materials but do not always have the needed information. Using the life-cycle data, material fact sheets describing several stone types are being generated to provide useful information in this selection process, among other information. The one-page (double-sided) documents will summarize the current market for stone, regions of deposits worldwide, physical properties, applicable ASTM standards, as well as environmental data and human health considerations. These will be provided here as they are made ready.

• Material Fact Sheet: Granite
• Material Fact Sheet: Limestone
• Material Fact Sheet: Marble
• Material Fact Sheet: Sandstone