by aleida, on October 5th, 2009
Last week, while on a quick trip to New York City, Kevin and I were welcomed into the Brooklyn manufacturing facility of IceStone, a company briefly mentioned in last week’s post about recycled glass. We have specified their durable surfaces on projects for clients such as Whole Foods Markets and Wegmans, but we had never seen how IceStone makes the product. Well, we were very impressed with what we saw.
It was amazing to see the manufacturing process. The cullet, in its raw form, arrives in enormous sacks. It is surprisingly benign to the touch; we were able to run our hands through the smallest pieces as if they were sand. The sacks are moved into the batching station, where the cullet is pulled and added directly into the concrete mix that is then poured into the mold.
The pouring set-up, and the entire facility in general, is very small, so slabs are poured one at a time. After a short settling period, they spend about a week in the curing chambers. Many days later, after precise measuring, polishing, and quality control, they are ready to be shipped out.
The product has now earned Cradle to Cradle Gold certification, and while we didn’t see all the data that proves the product meets the Cradle to Cradle requirements, we did notice the on-site water reclamation system, the enormous skylights which make artificial lighting completely unnecessary during the daytime, and, of course, the rows and rows of 100% recycled glass obtained solely from U.S. sources. The Gold certification comes after a final push to eliminate all toxins from their dyes, so that now all the matrix colors on the IceStone product lines are completely safe. Their latest Refined Collection is incredibly beautiful, and should position this company as formidable competition for any other durable surfaces supplier lacking the equivalent sustainability qualifications.
Thank you, Sarah, for the great tour!
Click the icon below for more tour photos.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Kevin ODonnell. Kevin ODonnell said: a new blog about a visit to the IceStone factory – http://ow.ly/sRTb – #green #greenbuilding [...]
[...] late September we toured the IceStone manufacturing facility in Brooklyn, New York (the recap is here), and at Greenbuild 2009 we were able to speak with one of the company’s two founders, Miranda [...]