The price fuel has skyrocketed in most of the western world in the past decade, affecting all facets of life. The construction industry is no exception. In fact, the construction industry is one of the biggest entities to be affected. Both transporting building materials to the job site and operating heavy machinery in order to install building materials requires a substantial amount of fuel. In fact, the Florida Department of Transportation cites that there is a strong correlation between diesel fuel prices and construction costs.
When it comes to curbing the cost of construction, getting fuel expenses under wraps can be perhaps the biggest part. Now, here’s where simple math comes into play. If your building materials are 80 percent lighter than alternative materials (the way that StoneLite® is to traditional solid stone), that’s an 80 percent savings that you should be able to extend to resources such as manpower, machinery and (yes) fuel. You’ll need less of all of those things. You’ll need less trucks and fuel to transport the StoneLite® composite panels to the job site and you’ll need less machinery and fuel to install the panels on the job site.
Saving Money and Going Green Always Seems to Go Hand in Hand
As so often times is the case, saving money by reducing fuels costs also means positively impacting the environment by reducing fuel use. The EPA estimates that 100 million metric tons of CO₂ can be attributed to fossil fuel combustion from the construction sector in 2002! (Source: U.S. EPA, Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Key Industrial Sectors in the U.S., Sector Strategies Division, May 2008.) Imagine the environmental impact if ALL fuel use could be reduced like it can be with an 80 percent lighter-weight material like StoneLite®. The construction industry is one of the biggest contributors of carbon emissions, so it can never be underestimated just how much impact “green\” building practices can have on the environment.
Reducing carbon emissions is just one of the ways our lightweight stone panels can be considered a “green” building material. Depending on the scale of the project, choosing lightweight stone panels instead of dimension stone can positively impact the environment and a project’s budget.
