Natural Stone Institute: Sustainability Update
OBERLIN, Ohio – The Natural Stone Institute is making headway on sustainability issues since taking ownership of the Natural Stone Sustainability Standard (ANSI/NSC 373 Sustainable Production of Natural Stone) earlier this year.
Industry Wide EPDs
The Natural Stone Institute is coordinating the development of a set of industry wide Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for natural stone. Product categories include Flooring/Paving, Exterior Cladding, and Residential Countertops. The EPDs will represent projects installed in the USA with stone sourced from around the world.
Once published, the transparency reports will be available through popular embodied carbon databases including EC3 by Building Transparency and the Transparency Catalog by Sustainable Minds. Estimated completion date for this documentation is July 2022.
Learn more at www.naturalstoneinstitute.org/epdwebinar.
Industry Wide HPDs
The Natural Stone Institute is also creating a set of industry wide Health Product Declarations (HPDs). The HPD Collaborative has a special exception for geological materials which allows us to define the ingredients of our products on behalf of the industry.
This is a simple document, since natural stone has only a single ingredient. These should be available in November 2022.
To access an up-to-date listing of transparency documentation for natural stone, visit www.naturalstoneinstitute.org/sustainabilityresources.
New Green Building CEU
The Design Community Outreach work group of the Natural Stone Institute’s Sustainability Committee has developed a new CEU course entitled “Achieving Green Building Goals with Natural Stone.”
The course qualifies for CEU credit through AIA, IDCEC, GBCI, and LACES and focuses on why natural stone is an ideal choice for projects with green building goals and how to find the documentation needed to qualify for credits available through common green building programs.
The course will be presented as a live webinar on Tuesday, November 9 at Noon Eastern Time. Register at www.naturalstoneinstitute.org/greenbuildingCEU.
To learn more about the Natural Stone Sustainability Standard, which serves as the basis for all Natural Stone Institute sustainability initiatives, and to join the new sustainability mailing list, visit www.naturalstoneinstitute.org/sustainability.
