Natural stone’s inherent attributes make it a great solution for many green building project goals. It is a durable, aesthetically pleasing, sustainable material used for indoor and outdoor applications. When selecting natural stone for any project, it is important to know how the stone was quarried and fabricated to understand the impacts on the environment, including the land.  Responsible stone quarrying and production practices are well defined, and third party verified, through the Natural Stone Sustainability Standard, Life Cycle Analyses (LCAs), and product labels such as Health Product Declarations (HPDs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). Because the metrics and impacts are quantified in these product labels and the Standard, it has raised awareness and spawned efficiencies and innovations at every step of the process. It also makes it easier to compare materials before selecting the most appropriate one for a project. Understanding this information will ultimately help you make better decisions and select a natural stone from a company that is working to continuously reduce their environmental impacts. 

Adhering to Ethical and Environmental Quarrying and Fabricating Practices 

The Natural Stone Sustainability Standard, developed through a holistic ANSI Standard process, measures and evaluates Environmental, Ecological, Social Responsibility, and Human Health issues and impacts. Specific issues addressed include energy, water, site management, excess process materials, and land reclamation and adaptive reuse of a quarry upon closure. Many quarries, often in operation over centuries, can produce millions of square feet of material while still adhering to the ethical and environmentally conscious practices required of them. In fact, many quarries were implementing sustainable practices long before they were defined in product labels and the Standard. But now, these labels and the Standard help to quantify those activities and impacts, which has also led to more innovation and improvement within the natural stone industry’s quarrying, fabrication, and transportation activities.  

The Water category of the Standard requires that minimal fresh water be used in the processing of the material and ensuring that any water released back into the environment is safe. Quarries are required to have plans for Water Reduction, Recycled Water, and Enhanced Water Treatment. Optional points can be achieved for recycling and reuse percentages, and enhanced sludge management. Most quarriers and fabricators already recycle their water and some use no water at all. The goal is to respect this natural resource and to use and manage it responsibly. 

This barracks on the West Point Academy campus used Charcoal Black granite for its long life cycle and ability to tie to West Point’s existing stone architecture.

The granite came from Coldspring’s Charcoal Quarry in St. Cloud, Minnesota, which has been in operation since the late 1950s and has a quarry reclamation plan in place that includes a small lake and park. Photos courtesy of Coldspring.

Implementing site-specific measurement plans ensures responsible management of environmental impacts in the Site Management category. Quarries are required to have a Site Management Plan and establish Ecosystem Boundaries. These plans include addressing storm water management, dust control, safety precautions, and proper storage of any chemicals in use. All relevant environmental considerations in the Ecosystem Boundaries which may include streams, rivers, riparian waterways, plants, and wildlife must be maintained and kept current during operations. 

There are many ways to address the Excess Process Materials category. Additional uses can be found for scraps and small pieces of stone that keep the material from ever entering a landfill. New markets and revenue streams for quarriers and the local economy have been created that include using scraps and remnants as rip rap, aggregates, sculpture, signage, small decorative objects, and more. The excess materials are also used onsite for roadways, safety barricades, and the eventual reclamation of the quarry site. 

The Land Reclamation & Adaptive Reuse category requires that a post-closure plan be developed and maintained. The quarry must also demonstrate that there is ongoing review and maintenance of each plan. When the local community is engaged in the process, the potential range of ideas for how the quarry can be reused expand exponentially, as you will see in the examples described below.  

Innovative and Inspiring Quarry Reclamation Projects

Upon closure of quarries, there are unlimited opportunities for them to be reclaimed, reused, or adapted to suit the needs of local communities and also have a positive impact on the environment. Quarries have been turned into everything from stadiums, hotels, data centers, and amphitheaters, to parks, botanical gardens, golf courses, and more. Talented and creative companies and communities who are committed to making a difference, while also celebrating the heritage of quarries, made these projects possible. 

Braga Stadium

Photo courtesy of Leon from Taipei, Taiwan, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Braga Stadium complex in Braga, Portugal is situated within the area of a former limestone quarry. There is both a reflection on the past with a connection to people’s ancestors who were a part of the quarry operations, while also firmly being enjoyed in the present. The contrast between the geometry of the concrete stadium structure and the roughness of the quarry gives the building a sense of monumentality. The stadium offers athletes and spectators alike a unique and exciting place to enjoy the venue and landmark that is part of transforming a marginal area of the surrounding city and urban fabric into a highly desirable destination. 

Butchart Gardens

A former limestone quarry, which is now Butchart Gardens in Vancouver, Canada, offers visitors millions of plants to view and enjoy. Jennie Butchart, whose family owned and managed the quarry starting in the early 1900s, envisioned transforming the former quarry into a beautiful garden haven, which is now overflowing with lush greens and colorful blooms. Butchart Gardens is a National Historic Site of Canada and is over 100 years old.

Quarry Park and Nature Preserve

Photo courtesy of Coldspring.

Established in 1992, Quarry Park and Nature Preserve in Minnesota demonstrates the creative possibilities that exist for quarries after their active use has ended. The reclaimed quarry site offers space for hiking, biking, picnicking, fishing, swimming, and rock climbing, and was named one of the top 10 swimming holes in the US by the Travel Channel.

Sourcing Responsibly Produced Natural Stone

Choosing natural stone is a smart first step towards ensuring that your project can meet green building goals. Selecting a stone that also has an accompanying LCA, HPD, EPD, or is certified to the Natural Stone Sustainability Standard shows your commitment to sourcing responsibly produced natural stone. Certification to the Standard is the ultimate validation of responsible and sustainable production practices in the natural stone industry. As of 2024, there are 24 quarries and 10 fabricator/producers certified to the Standard. The range of materials certified includes 11 granites, 19 limestones, 5 marbles, and 5 quartzites, making it easy to select and specify a natural stone that is the result of environmentally sound practices within the industry and that will also have a positive impact on the environment, including the land. 

Additional Resources

Natural Stone Institute Sustainability Resources

Natural Stone Sustainability Standard

Natural Stone Resource Library

Natural Stone Catalogue

Use Natural Stone Website 

Manufacturing Impacts article series 

• Natural Stone vs. Terrazzo
• Natural Stone vs. Engineered Quartz
• Natural Stone vs. Porcelain
• Natural Stone vs. Sintered Surface
• Natural Stone vs. Precast Concrete

Understanding Environmental and Health Product Declarations for Natural Stone

U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System

International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge 

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An earlier version of this article appeared in the Fall 2022 edition of Building Stone Magazine. All photos courtesy of TWBTA unless otherwise noted.

Photo courtesy of Taylor Jewell.

Billie Tsien and Tod Williams credit their love of stone with their frequent visits to Rome. As Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners, the pair has designed and built more than 40 buildings, a large percentage of which are made using natural stone. “We’re interested in solidity, place and character,” Williams says, with the ultimate goal of creating projects “that have a long lifespan, are meaningful to the community, and will be loved for centuries.”

Their choice to use natural stone is both practical and philosophical.

The Day to Day of Stone

With each commission come client wants and needs for certain materials. Cost plays a factor. Durability and permanence play a factor as do future maintenance, longevity, and return on investment. These are all part of the practical side of material selections.

“Stone,” says Williams, “is a really good and durable permanent material. You go into the cathedrals, synagogues, mosques — the floors are made of stone, and they’re usually a patchwork quilt with headstones embedded in it and so on. It actually becomes more rich over time. I never go into the Pantheon without being absolutely riveted by the floor and the different colors that are there and the way it wears. I love the wear.” Stone is also a “wonderful and protective shell. It gives an exterior dignity.”

Tsien says that they are passionate about maintenance and longevity. “The idea of longevity is not abstract,” she says. Tsien and Williams connect with maintenance people and ask questions: How long does it last? Can this be cleaned? Who will clean it, and how? “Longevity,” Tsien says, “is very much based on the care of the stone.”

Character Development

The other side to design decisions and material choices is the emotional. It is Tsien’s and Williams’ innate senses that give a project a feeling of calm and quiet or energy and movement.

Tsien says she has always believed in “the importance of ‘showing the hand.’ We don’t believe in having a perfect, smooth stone that all looks the same from piece to piece. We’re interested in stones that have a vivid character.” It’s an important quality but hard to define. Some of it comes from natural stone’s irregularities, its “defects” that are not truly defects. Stone is a material pulled from the earth that is perfect in its imperfection. But beyond that, Tsien and Williams feel stone’s character more deeply. Says Williams, character includes “the person who cuts it and dresses it, how it moves along from being extracted from the ground to its final place. Even that has its own specific character.” 

Choosing the right stone starts with quarries, where the couple spends a lot of their time. Williams likens quarrying to “farming building material.” He enjoys meeting the quarrier, he says, “because that person knows how best to remove the stone from the ground and where the best pieces are of a certain quality or character. As with purchasing vegetables from a farmer you might say, ‘Well, what’s good today? What stone do you feel is best at this time in this place?’ I think that anyone who really loves stone, likes that it came from a specific place.”

When he visits a quarry, Williams says he imagines the quarried walls as buildings. “They’re negative buildings. I look at the wall of the quarry that we’re using, for example, getting Granite Tapestry stone from Tony Ramos’s quarry. [Ramos is a stone carver and founder of New England Stone.] That 80-foot-tall wall in the quarry is a building. There’s inspiration there.”

The relationship with the quarriers is important. “An awful lot of the stone industry is family owned,” Williams says. “That has a special resonance for us. We [Billie and I] are both married and partners and that goes deep in our studio; we all work in essentially one room. There’s conviviality and kindness and a sense of family.”

Tsien adds that “one of the great things about the stone industry is that it is personal, unlike something that’s manufactured like sheetrock — you can’t actually go to the source of sheetrock and talk to the person who owns the sheetrock. Whether it’s a quarry in Europe or India or Western Massachusetts, it’s always about the people together with the material. For us, that’s a very rich relationship.”

Good quarrying practices are also important to them. “You want to make sure the quarry is tended to in such a way that it is actually good for the earth,” Williams says. “Maintaining an efficient quarry, with as little disturbance to the surrounding ecological and community conditions is deeply important in stone sourcing. So, the quarriers have the same responsibilities that we do to make buildings that are meaningful.”

Source Code

Many of their projects take five years from inception to completion. “Within the first six months,” Williams says, “we’re investigating the stone.” They look at stone for the exterior and interior of their projects. “As we get into the interiors, we might find that another stone comes forward, or we look at the same stone in a different finish. We like to have at least two to three different kinds of stone that are similar so that we can make sure the owner and contractor have a voice in the selection. From the outset, we learn as we go.”

They look first for stone that might be local to a project but what’s more important is to find the right stone that will accomplish the project’s goals. For the LeFrak Centre at Lakeside, a covered ice rink in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, Williams says they wanted stone from New York but they couldn’t find what they wanted and got it from Canada. “We had it chopped in a particular way so that it would feel a little bit like it was done by hand years ago, or at least compatible with that. That’s a perfect example of where we couldn’t get the stone locally, but we could try to make sure it was grounded and quiet so that the landscape itself came forward.”

Tsien and Williams never demand that a client use a particular stone, but they will tell clients they have a strong preference for a material and offer their reasons for why it’s the best choice. “But our vision has to be their vision, and their vision has to be our vision,” Tsien says.

By way of example, Tsien recalls the design for the welcome center at the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Mich. The client wanted to use a “less expensive and more subtle stone which came from Minnesota versus a wild and crazy stone that came from Brazil,” Tsien says. “And so, we used the stone from Minnesota, and the project turned out to be beautiful, but in my heart of hearts I’m still curious what the result would be with the other stone.”

Williams and Tsien look at color and veining, often creating a “kind of tapestry of colors,” Williams says. He adds that they have a penchant for using dimensional stone. “I’m not interested in techniques that somehow try to thin out stone. Basically, we’re interested in the stone as an embodied material, something that has body; it should have depth both in meaning and dimension.” 

When asked if they ever disagree on what materials to use, Williams laughs and says, “almost always, but we always end up in the place where we agree.”

Ultimately their vision is part of a dialogue between the project and the earth, as well as an ongoing conversation with the stakeholders.  “We want our buildings to grow from the earth to the extent that they can,” Williams says. “When you’re talking about stone, you need to be humble because it has been around for a very, very long time.”

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All photos unless otherwise specified appear courtesy of the Richard H. Driehaus Museum Archives.

Exterior 1883

After the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, many homes made of wood were destroyed. When it came time to build new homes, laws were passed to prevent a similar disaster. Fireproof materials such as brick, marble, limestone, and terracotta tile became the preferred building materials since constructing buildings with wood was banned in the downtown area. 

Eight years after the fire, construction of the Nickerson House on Chicago’s near northside neighborhood began. The three-story, 24,000 square foot Italianate mansion was reported to be the largest and most extravagant private residence in Chicago at the time it was completed. The exterior façade is made of limestone and Berea sandstone from Ohio. Known as the “marble mansion,” the property is even more impressive inside. “The interior stonework consists of at least 17 different types of French, Italian, Belgium, and American marble as well as onyx and alabaster,” says Sally-Ann Felgenhauer, director of collections and exhibitions for The Richard H. Driehaus Museum. 

Exterior Pre-Restoration

Soon after it was built, the light-gray sandstone exterior would lose its luster due to environmental issues. “Over the years, the naturally light stonework blackened due to the build-up of soot and grime from industrial pollutants,” Felgenhauer says. As the exterior became dark and unsightly, the decorative stone elements also began to erode. 

The Nickerson House became The Richard H. Driehaus Museum when Richard H. Driehaus, a Chicago investment manager well known for his interests in preserving historic buildings, bought the home in 2003. According to a New York Times article, Driehaus purchased the home from the American College of Surgeons, a professional association that had owned it since the 1920s and soon afterward hired M. Kirby Talley Jr., an Amsterdam-based author and art historian, to oversee the restoration.

“My marching orders were to take it back to 1883,” Talley says in the New York Times article. “It’s remarkable to find a situation like this where you can honestly say that no expenses were denied to do the job the right way.”

In 2003, the same year Driehaus acquired the property, major restoration of the building began, including restoring the exterior façade.

Restoration of a Historical Landmark

“The Driehaus Museum as a Gilded Age mansion is an important piece of Chicago’s history and a window into the past that looks forward by exploring the interplay between historic and contemporary art that honors the legacy of Richard H. Driehaus,” Felgenhauer says.

Restoring the exterior required careful work by skilled teams. According to Felgenhauer, none of the stonework has been changed, but it has been restored. 

The sandstone and limestone used were both native materials to the Midwest. Berea sandstone, quarried in Ohio, was a common choice for buildings. Sandstone is a soft and porous material and while fireproof, would eventually absorb the soot billowing from the smoke from nearby coal plants. By the time Driehaus purchased the property, “those industrial pollutants had morphed into a kind of 100-year-old crust. In some places, that crust was 20 millimeters thick,” according to the Driehaus Museum blog post on why the Nickerson House used to be black.

“During the restoration, the Driehaus Museum contracted the Conservation of Sculpture & Objects Studios, Inc. (CSOS) to clean the façade using handheld lasers through a process called ablation,” Felgenhauer explains. “They removed 20,000 square feet of black crust from the stonework over a period of 18 months between 2004-2005. This was officially the first building to be cleaned in North America using this process.”

The reason lasers were used instead of more aggressive approaches such as micro-blasting was because the exterior was so soft that a harsher process would have resulted in worsening of the erosion and in some cases bleaching out the sandstone’s natural yellowish color. 

According to the Driehaus Museum website covering the natural stone exterior restoration project, the laser cleaned at a rate of approximately 2.5 square feet per hour. 

The website shares a bit more detail on the process of using the laser. “A beam of light from a handheld contraption is pointed at the building, and it breaks the molecular bond that had formed between the stone and pollutants,” according to Driehaus Museum. 

According to Felgenhauer, the CSOS team spent more than a year clearing 20,000 square feet of black crust and it was all done with small handheld instruments.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and designated a Chicago landmark on September 28, 1977. In 2008, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks awarded the Richard H. Driehaus Museum with the Chicago Landmark Award for Preservation Excellence, Felgenhauer adds.

Keeping Natural Stone Looking Great

Exterior Post-Restoration

While the restoration project was completed in 2004, the museum continues regular maintenance which includes restoration and conversation. “More recently, as part of the museum’s maintenance program, the building façade underwent tuckpointing,” says Felgenhauer.

It’s a testament to its longevity that with proper upkeep and maintenance, natural stone can withstand even the harshest elements and last for centuries. 

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The Importance of Material Transparency

Natural stone has a great reputation for environmentally friendly qualities such as its durability, low embodied energy, no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and being a nearly complete material in its natural state. Mother Nature does most of the work, making natural stone a single ingredient material suitable for many interior and exterior applications that perform impeccably over time. Most other building materials require additional ingredients and a more complex manufacturing process. Because these added materials and processes can have a negative impact on our health and the environment, they should be considered when selecting a material for a project. 

The different manufacturing processes and impacts of building materials are being documented in product labels including Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and Health Product Declarations (HPDs). These labels are intended to demonstrate that the health and environmental claims are transparent, accurate, and meet defined standards. These labels can then be used to select and specify building products like natural stone to ensure the well-being of a project’s occupants and the planet. 

Natural stone flooring options are limitless and can also support a healthy interior environment.

“Natural” and “environmentally sustainable” do not mean the same thing. These product labels are significant for the stone industry. They provide independent data to show how using natural stone in projects can support lower embodied carbon goals, providing specifiers with the information needed to make more effective material decisions. These labels also reinforce the important work the natural stone industry has been doing for many years to improve the processes of quarrying, fabricating, transporting, and installing natural stone, which are assessed through the Natural Stone Sustainability Standard.

Impacts during the life cyle of natural stone including raw material acquisition, transportation, manufacturing, use, and end of life are documented in EPDs and HPDs

EPDs and HPDs for Natural Stone Explained

EPDs and HPDs were developed in response to the growing green building movement and requirements that a product’s life cycle impacts are defined and transparent. Just like nutrition labels make it easy to compare ingredients, calories, preservatives, and other information about food products, EPDs and HPDs simplify the process of comparing building materials. The labels themselves do not necessarily tell you if a product is more environmentally friendly than another on their own—rather, they allow you to compare materials using the information provided in the labels to get a more complete understanding of their sustainability claims. To understand this better, let’s discuss these labels in more detail and consider how to use them in your next building or remodeling project.

EPDs

An EPD is a registered document that quantifies environmental information on the life cycle of a product to enable comparisons between products fulfilling the same function. EPDs define the environmental impacts throughout the product’s life cycle. Impacts that are recorded and provided in an EPD include: a product’s global warming potential, eutrophication, acidification, ozone layer depletion, whether the product contains carcinogens, and many others. An EPD may be used for many different applications, including green building design. For example, within LEED, BREEAM, and other green building rating systems, EPDs are used to encourage the purchasing of low carbon products with life-cycle information. Industry-wide natural stone EPDs are available for cladding, flooring/paving, and countertops, making it possible to meet health and environmental goals for any type of project with ease. The natural stone EPDs consider impacts that occur during the quarrying, fabrication, installation, care and maintenance, and disposal of the stone.

Natural stone countertops can play an important role in the health and well-being of an interior and its occupants.

HPDs

HPDs offer greater transparency of material ingredients and their potential human health impacts.  HPDs provide a full disclosure of the potential chemicals of concern in products by comparing product ingredients to a wide variety of “hazard” lists published by government authorities and scientific associations. The HPD should provide 100% disclosure of known ingredients and/or 100% disclosure of known hazards down to 1,000 ppm. All versions of the HPD are recognized within LEED v4 Material Ingredient credits. Within the LEED v4.1 Materials and Resources credit: Building Product Disclosure and Optimization: Material Ingredients, HPDs can also contribute to earning points. Through a special exception for geological materials, HPDs representing dimension stone materials worldwide were developed by the Natural Stone Institute. The HPDs are for common natural stone types used in the dimension stone industry including granite, limestone, marble, quartzite, onyx, sandstone, slate, travertine, and more. There are now 13 HPDs for natural stone that can be found in 15 different MasterFormat classifications, a trusted source for designers. Companies and design teams throughout the industry can take advantage of these industry-wide disclosures.

Stacks and slabs of natural stone ready for use as paving, flooring, or countertops.

Natural Stone Versus Other Materials* 

Let’s compare natural stone to a few other building materials to understand how stone stacks up within these product labels. For example, natural stone countertops were determined to have a global warming potential (GWP) of 46.8kg of CO2e/m2 (weight of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted per square meter) versus engineered quartz, which has a GWP of 102.6kg of CO2e/m2. The EPD demonstrates that natural stone can result in a 54% reduction of embodied carbon.

If you are considering natural stone for the exterior of a project, knowing that its GWP is only 21.4kg of CO2e/m2, versus precast concrete cladding which has a GWP of 62.3kg of CO2e/m2, makes the decision much easier. Choosing natural stone means that your project can have up to 66% less of an impact on the Earth.

While terrazzo is a popular flooring material, it has been shown to have a GWP of 82.2kg of CO2e/m2 versus natural stone which has only 22kg of CO2e/m2. Using natural stone for this same application can support a 37% embodied carbon reduction.

The HPD for marble demonstrates that only marble is present in the material. If you compare that to an HPD for a wood laminate, there are additional ingredients present such as phenol formaldehyde and formaldehyde resin. Exposure to these products is known to irritate the skin, throat, lungs, and eyes. Repeated exposure to formaldehyde can possibly lead to cancer.  

Sample HPD material content summary for marble and a wood laminate product.

How to Use EPDs and HPDs

To begin, make it a priority to select materials that will have a measurable positive difference on your health and the environment such as natural stone. Explore the EPD and HPD labels and familiarize yourself with the terms to effectively make comparisons across different materials.  Spend time discussing the various material impacts and options with your designer, material supplier, and installer to optimize the features of the material while also ensuring its long-term use and care. Knowing that you have chosen an environmentally sustainable material will keep you and the planet healthy while also contributing to your peace of mind. 

Natural stone has been used throughout history in iconic structures that symbolize beauty, strength, durability, and permanence. Other materials may strive to mimic these characteristics, but genuine natural materials connect us with the planet and its future in a unique and undeniable way. EPDs and HPDs will only serve to further the thoughtful use of natural stone in environmentally friendly, low carbon building designs for many years to come.

Additional Resources

To find EPD and HPD labels for natural stone, visit the Sustainable Minds Transparency Catalog.
For more information on Environmental Product Declarations and Health Product Declarations see:

environdec.com and The Health Product Declaration® Collaborative (HPDC).
BREEAM USA
LEED Rating System
MasterFormat

*NOTE:  The embodied carbon quantities displayed were estimated based on the following: 

Functional Unit: 1m²  

Scope: Raw Material Extraction, Transportation, Manufacturing (A1-A3)

Natural Stone: Industry-Wide EPDs

Pre-Cast Concrete Cladding: Industry-Wide EPD, 150 lbs per ft³, 4” thick

Engineered Quartz: Average of three individual manufacturer EPDs

Terrazzo: Average of three individual manufacturer EPDs

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