The stone industry in America is coming under the same environmental and ethical trading pressures as the stone industry in the UK.

There, the Marble Institute of America (MIA) has just established a Natural Stone Sustainability Fund in order to raise money to support a sustainability initiative by the Natural Stone Council (NSC).

The fund will also be used to help pay for some of MIA’s own sustainability initiatives, including a green advertising campaign and the creation of a natural stone sustainability continuing education program and other educational resources.

The aim is to ensure stone is seen as an environmentally preferred product, says this year’s MIA President, Brett Rugo.

He says: “Our goal is simple. We know that natural stone is beautiful, safe, durable and practical, but we need to reaffirm the stone industry’s overarching goal of positioning natural stone as the preferable green building material.”

And on ethical trading, the US government has threatened to ban imports of sandstone from Rajasthan in India because of India’s employment of children in quarries and conditions for workers in the stone industry.

The Sandstone Association of Rajasthan has approached its State Government to urge it to take up the case with the national government’s Union Commerce Ministry. Uttam Agrawal, Patron of the Sandstone Association of Rajasthan, says the threatened ban has no basis as stone producers there follow all the set norms and standards.

NSS takes a closer look at the Ethical Trading Initiative in the UK and how stone companies are responding to it in the article Ethical Trading : Time for a concerted effort.