Marble Institute of America: Press Room

Media contact:
Jennifer Kardian for the Natural Stone Council
Stefanie Jones Public Relations Inc.
678-352-3652
jkardian@sjonespr.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NATURAL STONE COUNCIL LEADING INDUSTRY SUSTAINABILITY EFFORTS

Partnerships with design and research communities propel momentum

Hollis, New Hampshire. June 3, 2009 — The Natural Stone Council (NSC), a collaborative organization representing business and trade associations serving the natural stone industry, announced today that the organization has made significant progress in its sustainability efforts in the first half of this year. Leveraging research conducted in conjunction with the Center for Clean Products (CCP) at the University of Tennessee, the NSC has developed and published several data-driven documents on their website as well as presented or been the topic of presentations at national and international conferences.

At May’s American Institute of Architects (AIA) convention in San Francisco, CCP Director Jack Geibig presented a session titled "Use of Environmental Data in Materials Selection: A Case Study of the use of Life-Cycle Data for Natural Stone". The session highlighted the limitations and strengths of life-cycle data in evaluating building materials through a case study of natural stone. The natural stone case study, which involved the creation of robust life-cycle inventories for various dimensional stone products, illustrated the lack of quality of already existing data sets and the challenges for forward thinking industries and architects to properly evaluate products given the limitations and low quality of currently available life-cycle inventory data.

Geibig will be presenting at several other industry conferences this year including November’s GreenBuild in Phoenix, using the research conducted in the natural stone industry as a foundation. Given the popularity of his AIA program, Geibig says his GreenBuild presentation will be life-cycle based and may also focus on data limitations. Geibig will also be speaking at Marmomacc in Verona, Italy, and StonExpo in Las Vegas, NV in October.

“Recognizing that one of stone's great assets is its long life, CCP and the NSC have developed life-cycle analyses for stone so that designers can assess the true environmental impact of their selections over time, and we are beginning to benchmark this information against other building materials as valid data sets are generated for those alternate materials,” said Geibig.

The NSC’s goal is to support the stone industry’s efforts to increase the preference for and consumption of Genuine Stone®. By providing sound data and third party verification supporting the sustainability of stone versus other building materials and characterizing stone as a natural choice in green building, the NSC aims to support designers and architects in confidently selecting natural stone for their projects.

“The NSC has identified several key areas, both internal and external to the stone industry, where a lack of credible information was hindering informed decision making by the design community,” said Tom Liebel, Associate Principal at Marks, Thomas Architects and a member of the NSC’s Sustainability Advisory Council. “Rather than merely paying lip service to the ‘fad’ of green building, the NSC is genuinely attempting to gauge their impact on the environment and to develop methods to reduce it.”

In addition to conference presentations, the NSC will also be working on a road mapping process to chart key opportunities and challenges facing the natural stone industry in the immediate future, particularly with respect to sustainability. The NSC stresses that the success of the road map process relies on the active involvement of professionals and companies throughout the industry. If you would like to participate or would simply like more details about the process as they become available, please notify Amanda McKenna at CCP – AMcKenna@utk.edu.

The NSC Committee on Sustainability consists of Chairman John Mattke (Cold Spring Granite Company), Alex Bachrach (Stone World Magazine), Bill Eubank (Luck Stone Corporation), Dan Ouellette (Luck Stone Corporation), Kathy Spanier (Cold Spring Granite Company), Quade Weaver (TexaStone Quarries), and Garen Distelhorst (Marble Institute of America).

For more information on what the NSC Committee on Sustainability is doing to promote Genuine Stone as a green building product or for information on the green building movement in general, visit www.genuinestone.org.

About The Natural Stone Council
Formed in 2003, The Natural Stone Council is a collaboration of businesses and trade associations that have come together to promote the understanding of, preference for and consumption of stone sold under the Genuine Stone™ brand. To learn more about the Genuine Stone™ brand and the efforts of the Natural Stone Council, please visit www.GenuineStone.org.

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