For Marmo+Mac 2024 in Verona, the Natural Stone Strategic Alliance (NSSA) invited numerous natural stone associations from all over the world to come to the event to discuss and promote a set of important joint projects dealing with sustainability.
The top item on the agenda was Global EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) Collaboration, whose aim is to verify the opportunity and feasibility of creating an EPD for stone materials worldwide, a fundamental step towards positioning natural stone on international markets as a leader in building and covering materials with low carbon emissions.
“The design community is increasingly focused on combating climate change, and the natural stone industry has a significant opportunity to position itself as a sustainable choice” commented Sarah Gregg, head of sustainability for the Natural Stone Institute and moderator of the meeting. “The Global EPD Collaboration project is a fundamental step towards demonstrating the sector’s commitment to sustainability worldwide. Combining our resources and skills we can establish quantified data sets and the messages need for stone to be recognized as a solution to reduce the carbon emissions incorporated into building projects all over the world”.
In addition to Sarah Gregg, persons of reference in organizing the event were Flavio Marabelli (CONFINDUSTRIA MARMOMACCHINE/Italy), Fabio Cruz (Centrorochas/Brazil), Nelson Cristo (Assimagra/Portugal) and Jim Hieb (Natural Stone Institute/United States).
“As the association that coordinated this important meeting at Marmo+Mac 2024, CONFINDUSTRIA MARMOMACCHINE is extremely pleased with the outcomes of the meeting and with its good attendance by the main natural stone sector associations worldwide”, said Flavio Marabelli, Honorary President of the Italian stone association.
“They are committed to bringing to term within agreed-upon times their own national EPDs and then to work together to verify the opportunity and feasibility of creating a Global EPD for stone materials. A further reason for satisfaction with this meeting – underlined Marabelli – was the decision to broaden the number of national associations participating in the Natural Stone Strategic Alliance (NSSA) and above all the decision to formally constitute an organization of global representation, a permanent one that can be joined by all the world’s stone sector associations to jointly deal with any topic of evident strategic importance for the entire sector, starting with the Global EPD”.
The national associations already committed to participating in the Global EPD Collaboration are: Assimagra (Portugal), Aegean Mineral Exporters Association (Turkey), Centrorochas (Brazil), Cluster del Granito, Marmol de Alicante, and Centro Tecnológico del Mármol (Spain), Confindustria Marmomacchine (Italy), Deutscher Naturwerkstein-Verband (Germany), Greek Marble Association (Greece), Kivi (Finland), Natural Stone Institute (USA) and Stone Federation of Great Britain (United Kingdom).
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