Sustainable Building Materials

Kate and I have been dithering about our kitchen countertop for over a year now, never completely ready to pull the trigger.  We've narrowed it down to granite finally, and we'll probably still go with that even after this latest discovery, but it did give us pause.

I found a company (and they're not unique) called Alter Ego in Catonsville (www.alter-e.com) that sells and installs eco-friendly, sustainable building materials, including flooring, tiles, countertops and other odds and ends.  Some of their products are pretty ingenious.  They have two manufacturers, one which sell under the brand name Paperstone, that produce a compressed paper and resin countertop using 100% recycled paper.  It feels nearly as hard as stone, is water-proof, and has a very interesting texture. Another resin-based product, Alkemi, embeds shredded, recycled tin scraps for a really beautiful reflective textured effect.

The option I liked the most is concrete.  Simple concrete.  You wouldn't expect it, but when concrete is finished properly, with bits of reflective material added and dyed nicely, the effect is pretty stunning.  You can embed nearly anything you want to customize the design.  Colored glass pieces, tiles, ceramic...really anything.  And because concrete is moldable you don't have to settle for a flat countertop.  They can shape the concrete into integrated drain boards, custom sink basins and any other shape you can imagine.

There's bamboo butcher-block, recycled glass, recycled glass in resin, and compressed cork products.  The unfortunate thing is that all of these products, save the cork, are very expensive, starting at $100 a square foot installed.  That's nearly double what we're looking at for our final granite selection.  It's a shame, because if price wasn't a factor we'd love to support one of these important, sustainable products.

Fact is, there's only so much granite, quartz, and marble in the ground.  And the industrial processes used to produce laminate and other commercial building products are damaging environmentally.  Hopefully soon the price will drop on some of these eco-conscious alternatives so that they can make a real impact on the building materials market.  Or let's hope that one day I make enough money to afford them at their current prices.

Let's work on that regardless.