Natural Stone Institute Publishes First Industry-Wide Environmental Product Declarations and Health Product Declarations for Natural Stone
Words: Isa Stein
Documentation gives natural stone an advantage in today’s building & construction industry
October
27, 2022 – The Natural Stone Institute has published industry-wide 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 quantifies
environmental information on the life cycle of a product to enable comparisons
between products fulfilling the same function. These EPDs are cradle to grave
in scope to define the environmental impacts throughout the entire life cycle,
including quarrying, fabrication, installation, care and maintenance, and
disposal.
HPDs
provide design teams and owners greater transparency of material ingredients
and their potential human 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.
Sarah
B Gregg, Marketing Director for the Natural Stone Institute and the industry’s
leader for sustainability initiatives commented: “The EPDs and life cycle
analysis reports will help natural stone to be recognized as a lower-carbon
building material. 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 agreed: “The importance of having
EPDs for the natural stone industry can’t be overstated. 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 their lifecycle data. These members
can now use these 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® as the EPD program operator because of the
company’s innovative EPDs. 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.
“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, Founder & CEO,
Sustainable Minds. “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.”
To
celebrate the availability of these new environmental performance and material
health reports for natural stone, the Natural Stone Institute and Sustainable
Minds will be co-exhibiting at Greenbuild in San Francisco, CA on November 1-3,
2022. Visit booths #1442-1444 to learn more. Find these reports and more in the
Sustainable Minds Transparency Catalog™: https://transparencycatalog.com/company/natural-stone-institute.
About the Natural Stone Institute
The
Natural Stone Institute is a trade association representing every aspect of the
natural stone industry. The current membership exceeds 2,000 members in over 50
nations. The association offers a wide array of technical and training
resources, professional development opportunities, regulatory advocacy, and
networking events. Two prominent publications—the Dimension Stone Design Manual
and Building Stone Magazine—raise awareness within the natural stone industry
and in the design community for best practices and uses of natural stone. Learn
more at www.naturalstoneinstitute.org.
About Sustainable Minds
Sustainable Minds is the only end-to-end product transparency solutions provider for design & construction today. The company is the first to integrate technical services, and EPD program operation focused on understandable and meaningful environmental performance and material health reporting—with digital and virtual tools to get products into projects. The Transparency Catalog™, the leading source of building & construction products for high performance low embodied carbon buildings, makes it super easy to select, specify, and procure greener and healthier products for high performance buildings—and reward building product manufacturers for making them. For more information, visit transparencycatalog.com and sustainableminds.com.