Natural Stone Environmental, Health Declarations Available
OBERLIN, Ohio – The Natural Stone Institute recently published industry-wide documentation widely used for environmental and health overviews.
The institute now offers ISO Type III environmental declarations, also called environmental product declarations (EPDs), for three applications of natural dimension stone: cladding, flooring/paving, and countertops.
Also published are 13 Health Product Declarations (HPDs) for natural stone found in 15 MasterFormat® classifications.
An EPD is an independently verified and registered document that outlines environmental information on product lifecycles to enable comparisons between similar materials. These EPDs define the environmental impacts throughout the entire life cycle, including quarrying, fabrication, installation, care/maintenance, and disposal.
HPDs provide design teams and owners detailed information on material ingredients and potential health impacts. Through a special exception for geological materials, NSI published declarations representative of common stone types used in the dimension-stone industry, including granite, marble, quartzite, and limestone.
“The EPDs and life cycle analysis reports will help natural stone to be recognized as a lower-carbon building material.” says Sarah B Gregg, marketing director for the institute, the industry’s leader for sustainability initiatives. “We’re also glad to be able to provide this transparency to help design teams accomplish their green building goals.”
Ralph Morgan, director of environment and sustainability for Polycor, agrees.
“The importance of having EPDs for the natural-stone industry can’t be overstated,” he says. “The terms ‘natural’ and ‘environmentally sustainable’ do not mean the same thing. We now have the independent data to show how using natural stone in projects can provide lower embodied carbon options, providing the building community with the information they want and need.”
Eighteen NSI members participated by contributing product lifecycle data. These members can now use the EPDs to represent their products for green building projects.
All NSI members can use the HPDs to represent their products.
NSI would like to thank the following companies for their participation:
Coldspring
Colorado Stone Quarries
Continental Cut Stone
Cutting Edge Countertops
Delgado Stone Distributors
Freshwater Stone
Independent Limestone Company
Ontra Stone Concepts
Planet Granite
Polycor
Quality Stone
Royal Bedrock
Russel Stone
Stone Interiors
Stony Creek Quarry
Valley View Granite
Vermont Quarries
Vetter Stone
NSI selected Sustainable Minds® LLC of Cambridge, Mass., as the EPD program operator because of the company’s innovative services. The SM Transparency Report [EPD]™ provided the technical information required in EPDs and brings that data to life by telling the natural-stone sustainability story across the product life cycle. All life cycle data included in the reports is third-party verified by Ecoform LLC of Knoxville, Tenn.
“With increasing awareness of the environmental impact of building and construction materials and the demand for transparency, EPDs are becoming a requirement for public and private procurement,” said Terry Swack, Sustainable Minds founder/CEO. “The Transparency Report [EPD] integrates product transparency with product marketing to drive greener decisions by making environmental performance information easy to understand. Now members have EPDs and HPDs for their products, providing them an advantage in today’s market.”
