Eco-Minded Cabin

The June issue of Metropolitan Home features a fabulous article about Tom Kundig, an architect from Washington, who has designed his own getaway cabin that blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior space. Along the way, Kundig has selected sustainable finishes to further assist in disintegrating the boundary between humanity and nature. 

In the bathroom installation photo you’ll notice that Daltile’s Elemental Glass was the finish selection.

Photographer: John Granen

Elemental glass tile is a nice choice because this line has both pre and post consumer recycled content. In most colors, elemental glass has 10% pre-consumer and 30% post-consumer recycled content. Typically, the pre-consumer content is derived from sustainable manufacturing processes like recycling water at the factory, reducing our energy consumption or preventing millions of pounds of waste from entering the landfill. Post-consumer recycled content comes from taking used glass from things like bottles and car windshields, grinding them up and re-glazing them to make new glass tile.

Tile is an excellent choice for your LEED and green design projects. It’s essentially fired dirt. What could be more ecological than that? It has a life cycle that spans 50+ years; it has virtually zero volatile organic compounds and in many cases is composed of recycled materials.

Over 97% percent of Daltile’s manufactured products contain pre-consumer recycled materials. With Daltile being the largest manufacturer of tile in the US, there is a good chance your project can use a tile that is produced within a 500 mile radius of the jobsite. For more information on Daltile and LEED, please use this link to search for where our tile is made, which lines have recycled content, and what type of recycled content they contain. 

We can continue to minimize our human footprint by continuing to select materials that make environmental sense. If you have any questions about Daltile products, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Thanks!

Hilary Noah | Daltile Architectural Representative | Oregon | hilary.noah@daltile.com