Complying with the requirements of international regulations and standards, regarding the conformity of products and services, guarantees the offer of professionals and companies, underlines one’s strengths and bolsters one’s credibility towards the public.

Surfaces made with marble and quartz agglomerate produced by Santamargherita are obtained from fine marble chips and fine granular marble or quartz sands, mixed with resins certified for contact with food and healthy premises.

In fact, the intended use of these surfaces is the most varied and for this reason the company has always chosen to not only comply with the required standards, but to also offer products that are safe for those who use them and environmentally friendly. The large assortment of agglomerate surfaces offered by Santamargherita also assure high technical performance, making them suitable for premises used by large numbers of people. They can be used, for example, for the surfaces of shops, offices, banks, but also for backlit floors and walls, with an interesting theatrical effect, as well as for ventilated building facades.

From retail to residential applications, agglomerate surfaces can be used by architects and interior designers for custom homes. The hardness of quartz allows you to make kitchen worktops that withstand time, while the elegance of natural stone can provide bathrooms with a special ambiance.

 

NSF ® certification

In order to offer the best performance in every field, these products are tested by the international NSF® agency (National Sanitation Foundation). What do they do, specifically? Since 1944, the year of its foundation by the University of Michigan (USA), the NSF® is committed to protecting and improving human health on a global scale. It is an independent, non-profit organisation, which provides and develops product certifications as well as services for the control and management of environmental and public health risk. NSF® International is the body that inspects, tests and certifies products for third parties: at the end of the test cycle and after approval by the institute, companies can use the NSF mark on their tested products, thus assuring that they are certified and that they fully meet local and international standards.

 

Greenguard certification

Santamargherita SM Marble and SM Quartz products have also obtained the Greenguard Gold certification issued by the Greenguard Environmental Institute. This program ensures that products designed for indoor use meet stringent volatile chemical emission limits (VOCs) to help towards healthier premises. Furthermore, the Greenguard Gold standard requires even lower total emissions levels and meets the requirements of the Department of Public Health of the State of California.

 

LEED international certification system

Lastly, as a member of the Green Building Council, Santamargherita promotes the LEED international certification system for sustainable buildings. Thanks to the recycled content and the technical features of its agglomerates, the company contributes to the LEED certification of buildings for the following criteria:

  • Recycled Material Content
  • Regional Materials
  • Minimum Energy Performance
  • Low Emission Materials
  • Innovation in Design

 

LEED, acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and active since 1998, is a US classification system for energy efficiency and the environmental footprint of buildings. In fact, it provides a standard set of measurements to assess the sustainability of buildings. Its most interesting aspect is transparency: the technical criteria put forth by the LEED committees are publicly reviewed for approval by more than 10,000 organisations.

Elena Cattaneo