TexaStone Quarries Gets ANSI Certification

GARDEN CITY, Texas – TexaStone Quarries is the first company in the world to be named a certified stone producer adhering to tough new sustainability standards.

Under the new council certification program, ANSI/NSC-373 Sustainable Production of Natural Dimension Stone, six quarries operated by the company received Gold certification, and its closely-allied fabrication plant garnered a Silver certification.

The certifications came after facility inspections by NSF Sustainability, a division of NSF International of Ann Arbor, Mich., which also verified the firm’s voluminous paperwork application.

TexaStone quarries and fabricates high quality limestone that is specified and used by architects, builders and owners throughout the United States. One of its signature projects was the limestone supplied for the recently-completed George W Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas.

“This is wonderful” said Brenda Edwards, owner/general manager of the 19-year-old company, located about 35 miles from Midland, Texas. “It was a tough process, but the rewards for our diligence and dedication in exceeding the basic sustainability standards and becoming the first company ever certified to the standards is totaling rewarding.”

The certification also marked a significant step for the Natural Stone Council (NSC), which completed the development of the voluntary standards earlier this year.

“Certification of TexaStone as a sustainable producer of natural dimension-stone products is a major milestone for NSC’s nearly five-year program to develop sustainability standards that dovetail with natural stone’s inherent qualities of beauty, durability and variety,” said Duke Pointer, Executive Director of the Natural Stone Council. “We can now add certified sustainability to the world’s oldest building material.

“Dimension stone is a sustainable product because it is natural and has a long durability, but the industry wanted to identify how the stone was processed from the quarries and the processors. As the first to earn certification to ANSI/NSC 373, TexaStone leads its industry in adopting more sustainable practices that help its customers and organizations meet the continued growth in green buildings,” said Tom Bruursema, General Manager of NSF Sustainability.

“Brenda Edwards and the TexaStone team are to be congratulated for achieving this ‘first,’” Pointer explained, “and we know the ability to use the NSC’s Gold and Silver certification seals in marketing will give her company a competitive advantage among those specifiers and users who thoroughly embrace the green movement and are looking for sustainability in the products they utilize in their projects.”

VIDEO: Learn more about the ANSI Standard on sustainable stone production.

“Because of TexaStone’s sustained, pioneering 10-month effort to achieve certification, other stone companies seeking certification for quarries and fabrication facilities, will probably be able to achieve this distinction in a significantly shorter period of time. Since the standards were formally announced, several stone companies have begun the certification process.”

Transparent, credible standards along with independent third-party certification are important to meet the demands of members of the construction industry seeking more sustainable stone products. This includes government agencies (local, state and federal) and others seeking to comply with U.S. Executive Order 13514, which aims for 95 percent of government contracts to include products and services with sustainable attributes, as well as a U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) standard for sustainable construction (GSA PBS-P100 facilities standards for the public building service).

The ANSI/NSC 373 standards cover nine facets of a quarrier and fabricator’s operation, including water usage and recycling, custody and transportation, site and plant management, land reclamation and adaptive use, corporate governance, energy use and conservation, management of excess process materials and waste, safer chemical and materials management and human and health considerations. There’s also an optional “innovations” standard.

There are four levels of certification each for quarriers and fabricators, bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Each individual entity can be certified individually. The scalability of the program allows companies to reach higher levels than their original designation as they improve their sustainability processes.

“Stone quarriers and fabricators in the U.S. and around the world can be certified under ANSI/NSC-373”, Pointer said.  NSF International, because of their early involvement with the standard will likely be the primary verifier around the world.

There also are chain-of-custody certification standards for stone distributors, but that process may not fully come into play until there is a significant volume of certified stone from quarriers and fabricators.

There are 18 different requirements under the ANSI/NSC-373 standard with a total of 41 possible points. The more points a company earns, the higher level of designation. The maximum points will earn the platinum level. Companies can upgrade to the various levels by improving their performance in the various facets of the program.

“Manage water recycling and energy use better and earn more points,” Pointer noted.

Each facility must be recertified every four years.

Pointer said the new standards will level the playing field between natural dimension stone and other building components.

“Though natural stone is man’s oldest building material and is hugely popular in all phases of construction, the growing “green” movement required us to develop standards that allow us to compare out products with others in the marketplace,” Pointer said.

“If you are going to sell to the architectural community,” added Edwards, “stone producers are going to have to conform to this standard.”

ANSI/NSC-373 was developed using the consensus based ANSI (American National Standards Institute) process and can be applied internationally with certification by a third party certifier like NSF International.

For further information, contact Pointer at dukepointer@naturalstonecouncil.org.

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