Sustainability and the Environment
From design and fabrication, to shipping, installation, and maintenance, we are committed to minimising our environmental footprint across our entire service cycle.
As specialists in natural stone, we provide environmental stonework that has a reduced carbon output – in turn, helping to create more sustainable buildings.
From design and fabrication, to shipping, installation, and maintenance, we’re committed to minimising our environmental footprint across our entire service cycle.
Providing a definition of sustainability is imperative, due to the unfortunate amount of greenwashing within the design sector. From the Stone Federation’s viewpoint, when we talk about sustainability, we’re assessing the whole life cycle of a project which includes the raw material extraction, production, distribution, usage, and end of life.
From PMJ’s perspective, the fewer processes required to evolve from raw material to finished product, the better for the environment and the more sustainable the material.
Legislation
Legislation plays a crucial role in our commitment to sustainability. Here are some key areas we adhere to:
- Soiled and hazardous waste: Environmental Protection Regulation 1991 and the Control of Pollution Act, Environmental Protection Act 1990 (Part II)
- Air pollution: The Clean Air Act 1993, Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Environmental Protection Act 1990
- Water pollution: Water Resources Act 1991 Part III
- Dust, odour, and noise: Environmental Protection Act 1990 Part III (Vibration and Statutory Nuisance)
Our ‘Environmental Policy‘ serves as our sustainability blueprint, addressing pertinent environmental issues and detailing the control measures that we’ve put in place to tackle these.
Building on our environmental policy, we’ve created a strategy to further reduce our environmental impact across all aspects of our operations, including:
- PMJ Masonry ensures that every project aligns with our environmental objectives, with the aim of minimising our environmental footprint.
- We have implemented a site management system to address day-to-day environmental concerns, supported by a monitoring system at our head office that measures the effectiveness of the site system.
- We only appoint staff and subcontractors who share our commitment and dedication to sustainability. They are trained in best practices and are responsible for implementing the requirements of our environmental plan on-site.
- The PMJ Masonry office also implements environmental procedures for all off-site operations. All procedures and policies are checked by the Health, Safety and Environment Officer.
- We are specialists in the use of natural stone. It is a sustainable choice of material, partially due to its durability, sustainable extraction process, and recyclability and reusability.
Sustainability of natural stone
When considering the life cycle process of a material, from raw material extraction to finished product, the process of natural stone is relatively simple.
Stone is quarried or mined from the ground, cut into slabs or tiles, transported to site and will often last for decades, and in many cases, centuries. Thanks to its durability, there is also the potential for the creative reuse of many stones, delivering a truly circular project. What’s more, the quarries and mines themselves have a fantastic track record of reuse or repurposing.
You only need to look at Honister Slate Mine in Cumbria which has been turned into a zip wire experience, or the Tout Quarry on the island of Portland which has been restored as a sculpture park and nature reserve, to see just how circular and sustainable the natural stone extraction process is.
While some ‘stone alternative’ or ‘stone effect’ products require intense heat and pressure to bond the resins, pigments and other ingredients, natural stone comes out of the ground ready to be cut, finished, and fixed. While many of these alternative products are marketed as a ‘stone-effect’ option, they cannot emulate the natural beauty or sustainability credentials of natural stone. Natural stone is, by definition, a natural product, formed in the Earth over many millions of years, extracted, cut to size, and transported to site, without excessive human intervention and invention.
Measuring sustainability in surface design starts with assessing the number of processes that have gone into the creation of the materials being used.
It’s not just the extraction process that makes natural stone such a sustainable choice for designers; the durability of stone is also part of what gives it such impressive sustainability credentials.
So many of our nation’s historic hotels, churches and public buildings have natural stone floors that are hundreds of years old and still performing well. It is very rare to find the same with some of stone’s competitor materials.
Much of this strength is thanks to the millions of years of compressive geological processes that go into the natural formation of stone. For a material that takes millions of years to form, providing a 100-year project lifespan is unsurprisingly commonplace for many stones.
Another way to assess sustainability in surface design is to look at a material’s ability to be reused or recycled, should there be renovations or change of use. Natural stone, thanks to its durability, can be reclaimed, reused, or even repurposed as furniture or pieces of art.
When comparing natural stone with large-format ceramics, terrazzo, and other flooring products, stone’s global warming potential was found to be significantly lower. GWP figures show that, for example, large-format ceramic tiles have a 74% higher Global Warming Potential than natural stone and terrazzo is 27% higher.
The Green Guide to Specification, which is part of BREEAM, sets out an A+ to E ranking system for the environmental performance of materials. In a case study project by the BRE, almost half of the natural stone-related components achieved either A+ or A and the majority of the remainder scored a C or above.