Michael Poultney, MD of Portland stone company Albion and deputy chairman of Stone Federation’s Quarry Group, has welcomed the Embodied Carbon in Natural Building Stone in Scotland report for furthering the evidence that indigenous stone is the most environmentally friendly building material. The report was introduced by two of its authors in NSS last month (June).

Michael Poultney told NSS: “This report openly discusses the potential weaknesses in the figures it presents, such as the higher manual input in developing countries’ quarrying and the assumption that all goods go direct to their destination on container ships. I think this honesty gives the report so much more gravitas than the secretive figures from some quarters.

“I am not at all surprised that there are variations between different quarries. Our own production figures and fuel used vary markedly from month to month, depending on geology at the face, the amount of overburden removed at that particular time and even time restraints on the physical measuring of the final blocks by the quarry manager.

“I suppose the only real surprise here is the amount of fuel used to transport the stone from the developing countries. Perhaps I had been sucked in by the ‘there is no impact from shipping’ argument. Clearly the massive mileage eventually has an impact.

“It is a pretty thorough report and they certainly seem to have got a grip on the main issues. Comparisons between the environmental impacts of building materials are fraught with dangers, but kindergarten science screams at us that the production methods employed to make bricks, cement and steel uses more energy, and therefore releases more CO₂, than extracting and processing stone.”