DNA urbano: a versatile, resistant, eco-friendly material for environmentally-conscious architecture.
Stone Italiana introduces DNA Urbano, an innovative line of slabs made from street sweeping debris. This new product line is the result of a collaboration betweenStone Italiana and CEM Ambiente Spa, a company engaged in the collection and treatment of waste in forty-nine municipalities in Lombardy.
DNA Urbano fits perfectly into the green philosophy embraced by Stone Italiana, a company that has always paid attention to environmental issues in the production process and is continuously searching for new, eco-friendly, low-environmental impact alternatives for the building industry.
The main component of DNA Urbano surfaces (between 75% and 55.7%) consists of street sweeping debris, that is, gravel that builds up along the pavement edges. The debris is properly treated and converted into salvaged material and thus becomes a new raw material that allows for energy savings, recycling and lower waste disposal costs.
In fact, it is estimated that approximately 4% of all waste generated in Italy consists of debris from street sweeping operations. If all of that debris were recovered, the relevant landfill disposal costs would be eliminated.
The remaining components of DNA Urbano are sand, quartz powder and polyester resin, the latter in a percentage of between 4 and 6.6% as a maximum, in line with the Ecolabel certification requirements.
Currently, DNA Urbano is mostly made from sweeping debris from the streets of Milan, hence its name. The Urban DNA of this product line “holds the essence of the city’s history”. Here and there, you may happen to catch a glimpse of a microchip, a fragment of coloured glass, a thread of thin iron wire, a seed or an aluminium particle embedded in the surface of a slab.
The very DNA of the city.
