In the NY Times Home & Garden section this week, there was a small article on another recycled aggregate concrete countertop option: Eco, by Cosentino. If you’re like everyone else, if you hear the words ‘green’, ‘eco’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ you’re pretty much ready to gouge your eyes out with a rusty spoon. Me too.

So why is this a good thing?

Short of living in the woods naked while growing our own food and never going anywhere, pretty much anything we do is going to have some kind of impact on the planet. Minimizing the impact is the greenest thing we can do.

For a long time now, recycled building materials have had a higher price point than conventional materials. Even this ECO product is priced in the $68 – 118/SF range. But many concrete products out there have come down to the $50-60/SF range, like New River Concrete Countertops.

Granite has come down in price to as low as $45/SF in some cases. But granite isn’t green. Unless you wait around another 4.5 billion years, the earth isn’t making any more of it. And getting it to the project site isn’t green, either. I personally shy away from granite because everyone and their brother has it, & I’m allergic to the beaten path.

Mainstream hope for green

Preferences aside, it’s an excellent sign that places like Lowe’s are picking up these products. Even IKEA added DuPont’s Zodiaq Quartz product to their countertop options. Very, very good news for two reasons:

1. These products are pushing into the mainstream market, where many people get exposed to them without a lot of sales pressure in a showroom, and see they are within reach of their budget.
2. The availability of these products in the big boxes and affordable marketplaces will begin to drive down the price of green materials industry-wide. In turn, green will start to overtake the conventional materials market.

Good for the wallet, good for the planet. If every material has its drawbacks, why not go green anyway? At the very least you’ll sleep better. Even if you’re not under a tree.