In this Sustainable Sidebar product post, we’ve decided to highlight a few sustainable surface materials durable enough to handle the daily wear-and-tear on your dwelling, but won’t harm your conscience. Made with recycled content, rapidly-renewable resources, natural composite materials, or all of the above, these products are healthy for you, your home, and the environment… Did I mention some of them are also playful and fun?!
ShektaStone – Counterfeit Line: Recycled Paper – Currency removed from Circulation
ShetkaStone is made from 100% recycled paper, plant, or cloth fibers. For the counterfeit line they use shredded currency, removed from circulation. Plaster, plastic polyester, and paper glue are used as supplemental binding agents, and then sealed with a zero VOC finish. When you’re finished with your ShektaStone, it can be recycled and used in the manufacturing of new products.
Teragren – Moso Bamboo: Strand Face in Wheat
Bamboo is an amazing material. Used for everything from serving utensils to structural building materials, this resource covers the gamut and it’s rapidly renewable. Teragren uses a specific species of bamboo for their surfaces. Optimum 5.5 Moso Bamboo from the Zhejiang province in China, is among the hardest species, with extremely dense fibers. Bamboo reaches maturity every 5-1/2 to 6 years, when it is then harvested for use.
ConcreteWorks – Color Husk: Concrete surface with Rice Hull Fillers
ConcreteWorks has developed a sustainable concrete without compromising its wonderful character. They have replaced raw aggregates with post-consumer recycled material and industrial by-products, diverting upwards of 80% of the total product weight in material from landfill. In the Husk color, one of those recycled fillers is rice hulls. This protective covering for a grain of rice, is a natural substitute for raw aggregates and creates beautiful visual texture.
Trinity Glass – Absolutely: Recycled Glass and Low-Carbon Cement
Trinity Glass is a composite surface made from a patent-pending formulation of recycled glass and low-carbon cement. The surfaces are used for countertops, tabletops, wall cladding, and exterior surfaces. The beautiful color palette is suitable for any design, commercial or residential.
OKITE – Prisma Giallo: Quartz
OKITE is composed of natural quartz crystals. This surfacing material is highly stain and scratch resistant, making it a great option for kitchen and bath applications. The manufacturing process creates a product that is harder, non-porous and easier to maintain than natural stone.
Squak Mountain Stone – Recycled Paper and Glass / Low-Carbon Cement / Fly Ash – Natural
Squak Mountain Stone is a fibrous-cement material comprised of recycled paper, recycled glass, coal fly-ash and cement. The material is hand-cast into “slabs” as an alternative to natural or quarried stone. This product is finished beautifully with a similar resemblance to soapstone or limestones.