Companies are beginning to find that simply saying they are sustainable is not making much of an impression. Clients want evidence and some stone companies are offering it. Those that can’t could find they are getting left behind – and not just in the environmental stakes… because saving energy means saving money.

The demand for sustainability shows no signs of diminishing. On the contrary, it is starting to impact on stone companies – even those not aware that it is – because those that have done something about it are increasingly promoting the fact to clients and specifiers.

As the owner of one company told NSS: “Not many clients ask about sustainability, but when we mention it to them, these days they are interested to hear about it. It can help secure the order rather than it going to a competitor.”

Some of the companies that extract stone from the British Isles have begun to understand the change that has taken place and are working towards achieving standards that demonstrate how sustainable their materials are. And one of them, Royal Forest Pennant, which supplies Forest of Dean Pennant sandstone paving, has now achieved PAS 2050 certification to provide a carbon footprint figure for its stone. 

PAS stands for ‘publicly available specification’. PAS 2050 comes from the British Standards Institution (BSI) and provides a method for assessing the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of goods and services. It can be used by organizations of all sizes and types, in any location, to assess the climate change impact of the products and services they offer. It is free and can be downloaded  from the BSI website (www.bsigroup.com).

PAS 2050 helps organizations carry out internal assessments of GHG emissions, identifying ‘hotspots’ of energy use and related cost/energy savings opportunities. It enables companies to evaluate alternative product configurations, sourcing and manufacturing methods, raw material choices and supplier selection, devise on-going programmes aimed at reducing GHG emissions and produce reports about their corporate responsibility.

How Royal Forest Pennant achieved PAS 2050 will be explained in more detail in the next issue of NSS. Working towards achieving it gave Royal Forest Pennant some surprises – for example that more than half the GHG emissions in the (admittedly low) carbon footprint of Royal Forest Pennant paving comes from the diamonds used in processing it – because industrial diamonds have a huge carbon footprint.

Another surprise was how much of the company’s carbon footprint came from packaging, particularly from plastic strips separating the stones, from pallets and from  shrink wrapping. They were all areas where the carbon footprint could be (and has been) reduced – and with the smaller carbon footprint comes a reduction in costs.

One aim of PAS 2050 is to give customers a common basis for understanding the assessment of life cycle GHG emissions when making purchasing decisions and using goods and services.

Not enough companies have PAS 2050 for it to be able to provide much comparative data at the moment, although Royal Forest Pennant wants to make the work it has done on its assessment available to the stone industry to make it easier and less expensive for other companies to complete the process for themselves.

Other major British stone suppliers have taken a different route to proving their sustainability credentials. Realstone, based in Derbyshire (with its quarrying arm of Block Stone) is working towards BES 6001.
This standard from the BRE enables construction product manufacturers to provide evidence that their products have been made with materials that have been responsibly sourced.

The standard describes a framework for internal management of a company, supply chain management and environmental and social aspects that must be addressed in order to ensure the responsible sourcing of products.

Realstone wanted to achieve BES 6001 because, says Managing Director Iain Kennedy, major construction companies are expecting to see evidence of sustainability from their suppliers.

Realstone started on the BES 6001 route late last year after Iain attended a seminar about it. The company expects to achieve it by the end of this year.

One early benefit has been a change in the way its waste is dealt with, including the appointment of a new company to take it away. Iain says that no doubt when the original waste system was established it was the best solution, but BES 6001 has prompted Realstone to revisit all these areas of its business.
Another simple and noticeable change is the appearance of notices by light switches that say “Last out, lights out”. It is not high tech but it represents a change of attitude that is running through the company.

Albion Stone on Portland, on the other hand, has just embarked on ISO 14001 to demonstrate its sustainability credentials. This is an internationally accepted standard for putting in place an effective environmental management system (EMS). It is not as comprehensive as BES 6001 but is easier to achieve and Michael Poultney, Albion’s Managing Director, sees it as a stepping stone towards 6001.

BES 6001 grades companies according to the level of sustainability they achieve. Michael wants Albion to go straight in at the top level ‘Excellent’ rating and is prepared to wait until it can do that to start the process.

Michael says: “We’re finding people are asking for these standards more and more now. It’s got to the stage where they almost assume you are going to have them. Saying you are working towards them isn’t cutting any ice any more.”

And it is not just a question of competing against cheap imports, but of keeping up with them. British stones might claim to be the sustainable option, but it is imports, especially from China, that are starting to carry these internationally recognised sustainability standards.

The subject of sustainability has been creeping up the stone industry agenda since David Richardson, a Director of BRE, was elected for his two-year term as President in 2006. In 2008 Stone Federation formed a Sustainability Working Group that David chaired after his two-year term as President was over. This month (on 19 and 27 April) Stone Federation is hosting Sustainability workshops in Garston, Hertfordshire, and York. They include guidance on the preparation of sustainability statements, demonstrations of sustainability assessment tools and explanations of the various environmental certification schemes.

The fact there are various environmental certification schemes across industry has not helped in establishing precisely what constitutes ‘sustainable’. The resulting confusion has led to accusations of ‘greenwash’, often justifiably.

Opinions about what constitutes sustainability have varied from one extreme (that nothing is sustainable because the World is finite and therefore all its resources are exhaustible) to the other (that everything is sustainable because man neither creates nor destroys anything but simply changes its state). Most people hold a view somewhere in between based on human timescales and whole-life costs of buildings.
Vague statements of sustainability are beginning to give way to independently verified standards appearing on products.

The stone industry’s response to sustainability at first was to maintain that stone was so obviously sustainable it did not need to prove it was. It was a head-in-the-sand attitude that meant it had little input to the BRE Green Guide to sustainability. Consequently, when the Green Guide went live (www.bre.co.uk/greenguide) there was a measure of outrage in the stone industry that although stone came out well in most categories, the systems using it were not universally the greenest available.

It has focused the industry’s attention on the issue. Stone suffers in the Green Guide because the way ‘green’ is measured includes waste and water usage. If you consider as waste the amount of quarried stone that does not end up as masonry – typically 50-80% – and factor in the amount of water used in the processing of stone without considering how much of it is recycled, stone’s sustainability rating starts to fall.

Following the initial disquiet, the stone industry has since been working with BRE on a more sensible description of sustainability for stone.

Colleges offer sustainability courses

A centre that will promote environmental improvements and undertake research into reducing the impact of the built environment has been launched at Leeds Metropolitan University.
The Leeds Sustainability Institute will tackle the challenges of creating more sustainable places, communities and economies to enable society and its infrastructure to become sustainable.
Jonathon Porritt, founder of Forum for the Future and a former Director of Friends of the Earth, gave a keynote address at the launch of the Sustainability Institute.
Meanwhile, Edinburgh’s Telford College has launched Scotland’s first dedicated renewable energy skills training centre.
Aimed at those already employed in the renewables and construction industry, the courses will allow learners to develop skills in key areas of renewable construction and help support Scotland’s renewable energy industry.
The course is intended to complement the more traditional courses offered by the college, such as heritage, roofing and brickwork.

Stone Federation Sustainability Statement

Stone Federation encourages its members to commit to the delivery of a quality professional service.
Stone Federation recognises that its members’ operations have the potential to impact upon the environment and therefore seeks to ensure that the potential harmful effects of members’ actions are minimised wherever practicable.

The Federation supports companies to reduce or eliminate their environmental impact throughout their activities by engaging all staff, partners, stakeholders and customers and encouraging them to follow the approach set out below.

All Stone Federation members are encouraged to:

• Identify and comply with all relevant legal requirements.
• Strive to attain a satisfactory balance between economic, social and environmental responsibilities.
• To investigate all areas of energy usage in all areas of the business and establish a programme of reduction with measurable targets.
• Minimise the amount of waste produced by reducing, reusing and recycling, and ensuring careful and responsible disposal of any waste produced in accordance with current legislation.
• Endeavour to source materials from sustainable resources and to take all    reasonable steps to ensure that any stone or other products purchased from the   developing world are from an ethical source.
• Ensure awareness among all employees of the importance of environmental issues, and provide training appropriate to their responsibilities.
• Ensure activities are safe for employees, associates and others who come into contact with their work.
• Monitor purchasing practices and internal operations, including energy use and    transport, to ensure best use of natural resources and minimum environmental    impact.
• Develop relationships with suppliers, customers, contractors and relevant third  parties to discuss and promote improvements in environmental performance.
• Seek to incorporate environmental considerations into future decision-making at all levels.
• Make this policy publicly available to any interested parties.