Quartz stone No Longer Competes With Granite

Quartz Countertops Aren't Solid Quartz
In most quartz countertops some quartz is present.

About 10 percent of the material volume in a quartz countertop isn't stone at all, but rather a polymeric or cement-based binder. And the other 90 percent? Crushed up waste granite, marble, and natural stone or recycled industrial wastes such as ceramic, silica, glass, mirrors, etc.

Yes, maybe some actual quartz—sometimes maybe a lot of it. All this rock material mixed together and held together with binders is what gives a so-called quartz countertop the look and feel of stone.

More accurately, a quartz countertop should probably be called engineered stone or compound stone—terms that more accurately describe the way these products are created. The industry, in fact, is increasingly using the term engineered stone to refer to this type of countertop.

Bottom line: quartz countertops may include greater or lesser quantities of actual quartz, but they include no solid quartz extracted from quarries and likely have lots of other materials in them, as well.

Over 50 years later, Breton is still going strong and manufacturing quartz countertops. The process consists of blending pulverized natural stone aggregate with a mix of polymers, removing the air, then heating and shaping the material into slabs that have the hardness and appearance of natural stone.

Quartz Countertops Are Green
Fiberboard as a building material is much maligned, but you can say this about it: No tree was ever cut down for the express purpose of making fiberboard. The same holds true of engineered stone countertops. The 90 percent of stone-like materials that form the base of quartz countertops are all waste by-products of other quarrying or manufacturing processes. No natural stone is quarried solely for use in quartz countertops.

Even the resins that comprise the remaining 10 percent of a quartz countertop have become more natural and less synthetic. Breton's trademarked term for this ingredient is "Biolenic Resins," referring to a combination of artificial and organic resins, the latter derived from non-food vegetable oils.

You Often Walk on Quartz
Homeowners think of quartz in terms of kitchen or bathroom counters. But the majority of quartz is slabbed out in massive sizes for things like shopping malls, airports, and Prada floors. No doubt you have walked on quartz countertop material and not even known it.