5 Eco-friendly, Ethical and Beautiful Countertop Materials

In Resources — By Aamodt / Plumb

5 Eco-friendly, Ethical and Beautiful Countertop Materials

Looking for advice and inspiration for choosing a beautiful, eco-friendly and ethical countertop material? In this video, Aamodt / Plumb Co-Founder Mette Aamodt talks with Interiors Associate, Sarah Lueck, comparing several countertop materials, from wood butcherblock to soapstone, that should be considered when designing your new kitchen or bathroom. Other key components that they break down are durability, cost and sanitation.

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Read the Transcript:

Mette Aamodt (MA): Hey, folks. Welcome to the Aamodt /Plumb YouTube channel. We are starting a new series on slow homes where we give you tips and advice for creating a home that is good, clean, and fair. My name is Mette Aamodt. I am co-founder of Aamodt Plumb Architecture, Interiors and Construction, and I will be your host. I’m here today with Sarah Lueck who is our Interiors Associate at Aamodt Plumb, and she’s in charge of all things interior selections and materials. Today, we’re going to talk about countertop materials. When planning a new kitchen or bathroom, countertops or one of the most important decisions. There are lots of things to consider when choosing a countertop like durability, cost and sanitation. If you’re designing a Slow Home that is good, clean and fair, you’re going to want to consider the material’s beauty, sustainability, and if it was sourced ethically. Let’s delve into some of those issues with Sarah. So, Sarah, what are some of the most popular countertops materials that you find in the showroom?

Sarah Lueck (SL): In the showroom, I see a lot of quartz composites, which is an engineered stone. There’s also a lot of imported natural stone, and there’s a lot of plastic laminates on the lower end.

MA: Why are these so popular?

SL: For the engineered quartz, it’s really about easy care. It’s not going to show any scratches or stains. It’s not going to chip, so people love that. They also love the natural stones because they’re beautiful and becomes a really gorgeous element in your kitchen, so they’ll pay a lot of money for those. For the plastic laminates, it’s also an easy care surface at a much lower price point.

MA: Do any of these options, these typical options fit into our slow homes category of beautiful, ethical and eco-friendly?

SL: Unfortunately, not. The plastic laminate is plastic. It’s formaldehyde based, it’s resin, it’s particleboard underneath. It’s horrible. I know it’s cheap, but we’ve got some other options that we’ll talk about later that are going to be better while still being affordable and low maintenance, which is great.

MA: Anything else?

SL: Engineered stone, unfortunately, it’s kind of the same story. It sounds like a real stone, but what really is happening there is the plastic matrix that those little pieces of quartz are in is horrible. It really renders the stone useless in terms of ever being able to return those materials back deeper. It can also come off when you’re cooking and cutting on the material.

MA: I didn’t know that.

SL: It’s no good. I know it looks beautiful like stone, and it performs really well, but those issues are really not worth the upside that material. So, imported stone raises a lot of questions for us. Ethical labor practices in a traceable supply chain are things we just don’t know from here. A lot of the stone that we see are coming from Brazil and India.

MA: I know that Brazil has had a lot of issues with forced labor in other sectors, in particular, the timber sector. I haven’t heard anything specifically about stone quarries in Brazil, but if you’ve heard of anything, please put it in the comments down below, so we can spread that information. India, on the other hand, who produces over half the world’s granite, has been frequently cited for abuses in their granite quarries, for abuses related to forced labor, child labor and unsafe working conditions. I’m going to put a link to a study down below on that one. I’m also going to put up a chart that shows goods most commonly produced with forced labor and child labor. The top of the list is India and Brazil, and I’m going to circle stone and timber that we referenced earlier.

SL: With imported natural stone, we also have some environmental questions. There’s strip mining, there’s issues with chemicals used getting leached to the water table. There’s the question of the carbon footprint it takes to get that stone to the U.S., so those are things that just get factored into our concerns over these imported natural stone products.

MA: That’s depressing. Is there anything we can do about this? Certainly, don’t buy granite from India or timber from Brazil, and remember that every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of world that you want to live in. So, for our audience, is there a showroom you can go to where they can find countertop materials that are ethical, eco-friendly and beautiful?

SL: Not really, but we’ve put a list together ourselves that we can show you.

MA: The first wood butcherblock. This is the countertop material of choice in Scandinavia. Every home I went into in Norway this summer had wood countertops. It’s probably the one from Ikea that we’ll link below, which is a great, durable budget-friendly option. This image is of a typical Norwegian kitchen, and it’s from Norwegian blogger, Lil Teresa, linked down below as well. Sarah, why do we like butcherblock so much?

SL: It’s a renewable resource and especially if you get FSC certified wood as the source, it means it’s coming from a forest that’s sustainably managed, so that’s really great. It’s also an affordable option. It’s very durable, and it even has antimicrobial properties.

MA: That reminds me. There’s even a study that proves that bacteria live longer on plastic cutting boards compared to wood cutting boards. You can find that link down below. I’m going to put it there for you to read. So, what are the cons? What are the downsides of using this?

SL: A couple of the cons are you want to avoid rot. Using a drop-in sink is the way to go if you’re going to have wood around your sink area, and then maintenance is just oiling or waxing it every so often to keep the surface consistent.

MA: The next option is stainless steel.

SL: We love stainless steel. It’s an easy care material. It’s not going to stain or etch or crack the way a stone would. It’s easy to clean. It’s heat resistant. You can put a hot pot directly on the surface. You can make them to customizable shapes. You can have a custom island or an integrated sink made out of stainless steel in that island, so it’s a continuous surface, which is really cool. It’s even recyclable. At the end of its life cycle, it can return back to stainless steel in another way, which is great. It’s also a low emission product to manufacture, so those are all good things.

Now, the cons are it’s a high embodied energy material to manufacture. It’s also hard to trace the raw materials to know what the conditions are and where it’s coming from. It can also be hard to track the ethical labor practices of some of the off-the-shelf items.

MA: The stainless steel, is that something you can buy those countertops ready to go in the showroom?

SL: Usually not. If you need it to be custom to your kitchen, it is a custom product. You’d be working with a manufacturer. Actually, this sample comes from a company. We’ll give you the link to that, that does custom stainless steel countertops, and they will ship to anywhere in the country, so, that’s great. There are also off-the-shelf products that you can buy. A lot of people will get them from the restaurant supply stores. Those are actually a really affordable way of getting a stainless steel counter into your kitchen.

MA: Next on our list is U.S. sourced stone. We love stone because it is a natural material that is beautiful, durable and will last forever. Our preference is for U.S. sourced stone because it’s local, and it creates manufacturing jobs in the U.S. It also limits the amount of fossil fuel dependent transport needed for the raw material. The Natural Stone Council has created a third party certification akin to FSC certification for wood that ensures that manufacturers with this seal are producing stone in an eco-friendly and ethical way. Here are a few of our favorites. This is Danby marble from Vermont. Sarah, what’s cool about this one?

SL: We love Danby marble because it comes from one of the last U.S. marble quarries. It also has a wide degree of veining, variation in color. You can get everything from something that looks like a Carrara or Calacatta to something that’s really unique and moody and its own look.

MA: It’s also a really traditional countertop material that’s been used for hundreds of years, so we love that. Bakers really prefer it for baking because it stays very cool. Now, there are some downsides to marble, and what are those?

SL: The downside to Danby marble and really any marble is that it can stain and etch. The way that people work around this is to seal the stone. We generally try to avoid that at Aamodt / Plumb because what that’s doing is introducing a layer of plastic to the top of the countertop. We prefer to think of the stone as a living surface, and it’s going to change in patina with time and use, and we find that to be really beautiful.

MA: The next sample is soapstone.

SL: The American soapstone comes from the Alberene quarry in Virginia, and it’s a beautiful dark gray to black stone. It’s virtually non-porous, which is great. It means that it’s very hard, anti-scratch, antimicrobial. You can put a hot pot directly on the surface and it won’t do a thing. Historically, these stones were used in laboratories, and over the years, homeowners have realized that those properties work really well in their kitchens.

MA: This quarry was recently reopened due to an increased demand for soapstone because currently, the only other place soapstone comes from is Brazil. Are there any cons with soapstone?

SL: Very few. It is a more expensive stone than some other options out there, and it can also typically only be found in smaller slab sizes, which means you’re going to have more seams in your kitchen. Another material that we are really liking right now is a porcelain slab. So, this is a porcelain clay body. It’s fired to very high temperatures, which makes it an extremely strong, durable material. They’re produced in large slabs like stones, so they are cut and installed just like a stone slab would in your kitchen. It is a virtually non-porous material. It will not etch or stain. You can put a hot pot directly on it as well. It has a lot of very believable veining options out there. So, in a lot of ways, it’s very similar to a quartz composite without any of the downsides of a quartz involving additive plastics.

MA: That’s great.

SL: Unfortunately, the downside is that it is a relatively new product to the U.S., and it is also a manufactured product, so things to look out for if you’re looking at a porcelain slab are: Who is making it? Have they been doing it for a while? What are their processes? It’s going to take some digging to make sure that their product is, in fact, going to be as robust as they’re claiming. Currently, we like a product called Laminam. It’s an Italian company. We’re hoping to find a U.S. based manufacturer that’s doing similar work.

MA: Now that we’ve shown you five beautiful ethical and eco-friendly countertop materials, you tell us which one would you choose for your Slow Home. Put your answer in the comment section down below. Sarah, which one would you pick?

SL: I think I would go with a mix, the wood and the stainless. I like the juxtaposition. One’s very soft and warm, and one is sleek and cool. I think they work really well together.

MA: They do. I have always had my heart set on soapstone, and so, if money were no object, this would personally be the one that I choose. I like the fact that you can do experiments on it, such as food or chemistry experiments that we did in high school, and I like the fact that it changes in patinas over time, which I find to be very beautiful in a slow way.

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