Often when talking about sustainability, restoration isn’t brought up but it probably should. Jacqueline Tabbah of International Stoneworks discussed with Stone World the importance of thinking of the entire stone cycle for sustainability.

“When we bring up the topic of sustainability in the stone industry there is a huge focus on fabricators and quarries,” said Tabbah. “I think it’s important to think about the whole life cycle of the stone when talking about sustainability. So from the quarry to the restoration.”

Tabbah discussed how one of the big arguments for natural stone is that it lasts so long, taking examples from the Egyptian pyramids.

“A lot of people want to maintain their stone and keep it looking nice,” said Tabbah. “They want it polished or cleaned and the alternative (to having it refinished) is to rip it all out and start all over.

“When you have a beautiful piece of stone installed you don’t have to do that,” Tabbah went onto say. “You can refinish it. You don’t have to keep ripping it out and reinstalling the material, or changing it to something that’s not stone. One of the advantages of stone is that it can be refinished. There are a lot of engineered materials that are either really difficult to finish or it cannot be refinished.”