Sustainable Design Is Here to Stay

Sustainable design is here to stay. There is growing interest in creating beautiful, timeless, homes that are also sustainable. In today’s marketplace, with many materials and design options fighting for your attention, natural stone stands out as the perfect choice for meeting all of your needs while also enhancing the sustainability of your home.  Natural stone is versatile enough to achieve the aesthetic, performance, and cost goals on both the exterior and interior of your home over the long term.

Sustainable Design

Sustainable design focuses on increasing the efficiency of resource use energy, water, and materials. It is done to reduce a building’s impacts on human health and the environment throughout the building’s life cycle. Designing and constructing buildings in an environmentally-friendly manner requires careful thought and planning at the outset of the project. However, the paybacks from building green far outweigh the time and resources spent.

Selecting Natural Stone

Equipped with the knowledge of what makes stone sustainable, you can make the best choices for selecting, installing, and maintaining natural stone. Choosing natural stone demonstrates that you take responsibility to care for the Earth by actively striving to preserve, restore, or improve the natural environment. So, what makes stone sustainable?

Stone is a Natural Material

Stone is a natural product of the Earth, the original green building material. It does not require other materials or resources to create it. There is an abundant supply with different veining, textures, colors, shapes, and technical characteristics that make it possible for stone to be used in a wide range of applications. Stone’s varying appearance is the result of millions of years of geologic change and mineral composition. Natural stone contains no harmful chemicals or toxins, so you can be rest assured that your interior environment will be healthy, an important component of sustainable design.

Stone is Available Everywhere

Stone is also available regionally and locally. Regionally manufactured and extracted materials reduce environmental impacts by reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses during transportation of the materials.

Stone is Durable

Stone stands the test of time, which means the choice to use natural stone will only enhance the value of your home while reducing the need to replace materials over a longer period of time. Stones such as slate, limestone, travertine, and granite will all age beautifully and gracefully, providing years of use and enjoyment. Durability is especially important when choosing sustainable materials so that resources aren’t used to create new materials as often.

Stone is Recyclable

Stone is completely recyclable and has the potential to serve many different uses and purposes over its lifetime. Salvaging and recycling stone is a very viable option and a sustainable way to ensure that the useful life of the material will be lived out to its fullest. Environmentally, utilizing recycled stone can eliminate the energy, water, and other resources needed to generate new products from virgin or raw material sources, ultimately reducing or avoiding impacts to ecosystems and resource supplies. Stone fragments can also be adhered together to create a completely new design or appearance. These materials can also provide a sense of history or nostalgia in a home.

Stone Quarried and Manufactured Sustainably

Advancements in technology, including improved methods of quarrying, extraction, and fabrication have led to increased options and reduced costs of stone products, making natural stone easier to use and more desirable than ever before. Conserving resources, preventing pollution, and minimizing waste are some ways the stone industry is working to be eco-friendly through practices that support sustainable design requirements.  Through your selection of natural stone, you can be a part of using a material that is natural and is handled in a sustainable manner from the quarrying stage through to its installation and useful long life.

Your Local Stone Showroom

Visit your local stone fabricator or stone showroom. Do this visit to find out if there are sources of stone scraps or byproducts available from the manufacturing process that can be incorporated into your design. These options create new possibilities for natural stone while also ensuring that the materials don’t end up in a landfill. There are designers and installers that specialize in locating and installing recycled stone and could provide you with the source of stone you are seeking as well as the knowledge required to repurpose the material.

Consider Life-cycle Cost Perspective

When you compare materials, consider them from a life-cycle cost perspective. Even if the stone is more expensive initially, it will more than pay for itself and reduce future costs compared to other materials that need to be repaired or replaced frequently.

Sustainable Design is to Stay Here

Sustainable design is here to stay. Designing with natural stone for a home presents an exciting array of options. The choice to design with natural stone is a very personal one. But sustainability should be taken into consideration to help with the decision making process. 

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Sources

usenaturalstone.org/top-five-reasons-natural-stone-sustainable-choice-home/