Agreed, certainly not green. If you really want natural stone I would say that finding US stone would be far greener than imported stone. Not only would it be shipped a smaller distance but I would also imagine that in the US there are greater protections for environment and workers. Another option is to use remnants. Still not all that green but at least you are making use of leftover materials. As Sochi said, I think recycled quartz or glass would be neat. Also check out paperstone. To follow up on what Hollysprings said about fabricated quartz product, you don't technically have to mine quartz. It would be much easier and cheaper to simply use sand. I don't know what they use, but quartz is awfully common and I would be surprised if they needed any special quarrying to get the quartz. That doesn't mean that a quartz countertop is necessarily green though, but it may be a touch better than stone.

Out LDL/White Macaubus island was installed less than two weeks ago. It's so beautiful. Everyone that's seen it has commented on it and asked about it. We chose ours with some quartz crystal veining shooting in another direction that adds a bit of interest to it. Our leathered absolute black perimeter and bar will be installed within the next week. But we're going for more of a transitional feel rather than contemporary. I'm looking for "traditional with a twist" I guess. I chose it because I loved the linear pattern yet it felt flowy to me as well. I didn't want to deal with marble and didn't want the business of granite. I also didn't want my same antiqu brown granite from our previous home, though they were lovely. It was hard to swallow the price though! I may do marble hex tiles around the perimeter or a great small oval stone mosaic I saw at a local tile place. I haven't started my serious search yet since the perimeter isn't in. But I've been keeping my eyes opened.

I've made some more progress, but not much as you can see. I'm going to do a big push after this weekend and will post pics in about a week. I've decided to put a bowl on top rather than a saucer because I can make the bowl look like the tree is branching out. Just need to find the right size bowl. The reason I'm so slow is that I decided to clean out my glass and made 40 plate flowers that all need hangers and 3 totems. So that's been taking my time up but I'm going to try to finish with most of them this weekend. I've posted about it on the Junk forum, link below if you are interested. I had a hard time using the plates with the "lace" edge because I've seen them beautifully mosaicked in the middle. But maybe I can't do everything. Kathy Here is a link that might be useful: My new plate flower project on Garden Junk

Haven't heard of that brand of quartz, we went with quartz because I really like more of a uniform look in my counters. Our store recommend going with Hanstone quartz because I am kind of a clean freak and am constantly wiping down the counters and cabinets. I also wanted it very durable because I really use my kitchen a lot. They said it was antimicrobial, didn't need a sealer and was easy to maintain? I am sure most of the quartz would have the same properties and probably many of the granite types.