IceStone's Cradle to Cradle certified surfaces are not only free of petrochemicals and VOC's, they're beautiful, too!
The Brooklyn-based company focuses on a "triple bottom line," encompassing its financial profits, environmental footprint, and social impact. They're working toward carbon neutrality by combining efforts in energy efficiency, waste management, and through purchased carbon credits. Also impressive: they recycle, recover, or compost over 80% of their waste, and conduct environmental education programs for their employees.
This company is serious about social responsibility, from treating their employees well to giving back to the community. From their site:
IceStone’s mission statement addresses corporate ethics and social responsibility (available on www.icestone.biz). IceStone will complete a social audit with third-party verification. IceStone provides living-wages, health benefits, education programs and life-skill training to employees, including free English as a Second Language classes. IceStone’s donation program provides free or discounted material to projects that share similar social and environmental goals, with Habitat for Humanity receiving annual donations. We also partner with community, nonprofit, academic, industrial assistance and local social services groups to promote green-collar job creation, sustainable business practices, and the development of the green building industry.
Their Cradle to Cradle gold certification means that they've taken a hard look at their product's life cycle. Using recycled glass is great, but they took it a step further. Their product is durable and folks can reuse it many times. The company will even accept and reuse IceStone surfaces that customers ship back when they renovate. They can grind down and re-form the material into a brand new counter top!
The IceStone Durable Surfaces come in 29 colors and can contribute several LEED points to green building projects. If you want to check the stuff out for yourself, they've got a handy showroom and distribution locator on their site.
[VIA Re-Nest]
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Wow! Wish I had known about this company a year ago when we were building our house. Where do they advertise and market their products? I haven’t heard of IceStone, but it sounds excellent. It’s impressive that the company will take back and reuse their own surfaces when customers are ready to renovate. Too bad more manufacturers don’t see the wisdom of grinding down and re-forming “old” materials into brand new counter tops. This is truly a company that embodies green principles. Thanks for sharing!