Stone Federation ran two ‘Sustainability Workshops’ (at BRE in Garston and in York) in April to try to clarify some of the issues surrounding the subject. The Workshops were paid for by ConstructionSkills and presented by the scientists of BRE.

The aim was to keep the stone industry up-to-date with this rapidly developing element of business.

The Government has set in legislation its targets for CO2 reductions agreed in the Kyoto Protocol. It expects half of those reductions to be produced by the construction industry, both from new build and refurbishment.

Businesses that do not encompass sustainability are going to struggle in this increasingly sustainability-conscious environment. That is why ConstructionSkills has made money available to educate various sections of the industry about the subject.

Although the Workshops at Garston and in York were fairly well attended, they could inevitably accommodate only a limited number of people.

If you were not there, you can still find out about the subject in two documents produced specifically for the stone industry by BRE. They cover the subjects addressed at the Workshops and are available free as hard copies from Stone Federation (you can find its contact details on the Stone Federation News page on the inside back cover of every issue of Natural Stone Specialist), or they can be downloaded as PDFs from the news section of the Stone Federation website (www.stonefed.org.uk).

By the end of June, the publication Demonstrating Your Company’s Sustainability Credentials will be augmented by an on-line training module to help take you through what you need to be doing to show what your company is contributing to sustainability. Again, this is free. If you want the training it will help you if you have read the publications beforehand.

These two publications cover a lot of ground. You can get a summary of what that ground is from the report of the April Workshops on pages 34 and 35 of this magazine.

For more information or advice contact Ian Major or Nigel Stubbings from the Federation’s StoneTrain training arm at ian.major or nigel.stubbings @stonetrain.org.uk.