When selecting natural stone, clients rightly consider appearance, technical performance, durability, cost and environmental impact. Increasingly, however, another question needs to sit alongside these: do we understand where this stone has come from and how responsibly it has been sourced?
Construction supply chains can be complex and international, with materials potentially passing through several organisations and countries before reaching a project. This makes transparency and responsible procurement increasingly important.
For clients looking to specify natural stone, the Ethical Stone Register (ESR) provides a practical, stone-specific way of putting responsible sourcing at the heart of procurement.
Why responsible sourcing matters
Ethical sourcing is about looking beyond the finished product and considering the people, organisations and processes involved in bringing a material to market.
This can encompass issues including modern slavery, forced and child labour, worker welfare, health and safety, environmental management and transparency throughout the supply chain.
These issues are particularly relevant to construction. In October 2025, research commissioned by the Office of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement and the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre highlighted significant gaps in understanding modern slavery risks within UK construction and housebuilding.
CCLA’s 2025 construction sector roundtable also highlighted continuing vulnerabilities. Importantly for material specification, its report noted that material supply chains still lack meaningful visibility, specifically identifying stone alongside timber, pigments and minerals as materials where tracing risks through global supply chains can be challenging.
This reinforces an important point: responsible construction is not simply about what happens on site. It begins much further upstream.
A resource created specifically for natural stone
Stone Federation created the Ethical Stone Register in 2016, following the introduction of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, to provide the natural stone industry with a dedicated framework for addressing ethical and responsible sourcing.
In 2026, the scheme entered a new chapter.
The previous three-tier system is being replaced with a streamlined Ethical Stone Register membership. Companies are required to complete a robust questionnaire which is assessed against the scheme’s criteria before membership is awarded.
The principle is straightforward: rather than clients having to begin the responsible-sourcing conversation from scratch with every potential supplier, the ESR provides a natural stone-specific starting point for identifying companies that have engaged seriously with these issues.
How can clients use the Ethical Stone Register?
The first step is simple: make responsible sourcing part of the procurement conversation from the beginning.
Rather than selecting a stone and only subsequently asking where it came from, clients and project teams should consider provenance, supply-chain transparency and supplier practices during the specification process.
The Ethical Stone Register can then be used to identify and engage with suppliers that have demonstrated their commitment to addressing these issues.
Clients can also reference ESR membership within project briefs, procurement requirements and tender documentation, encouraging prospective natural stone suppliers to demonstrate their approach to responsible sourcing.
Crucially, this should be the beginning of due diligence rather than the end. On individual projects, clients may still need to ask questions about the specific stone being proposed, its quarry of origin, processing locations and journey to site.
The aim should be to create a clearer line of sight from project back to source.
Part of a much bigger shift in construction
The direction of travel across construction is clear.
Government guidance on tackling modern slavery in supply chains specifically identifies materials including aggregates, timber, natural stone and metals, noting that the people producing construction materials can be even less visible than workers on construction sites.
At the same time, responsible sourcing is becoming increasingly connected with the wider sustainability agenda.
The UNEP report Building Materials and the Climate: Constructing a New Future argues for a lifecycle approach to construction materials, considering impacts on climate, ecosystems, human health and wellbeing from extraction through processing, use and eventual demolition.
A 2025 World Economic Forum and McKinsey report on circularity in the built environment similarly highlighted the growing challenge of sourcing materials sustainably as demand for retrofit increases.
Responsible sourcing frameworks such as BES 6001 also demonstrate how mainstream these considerations have become, bringing together organisational governance, supply-chain management and environmental and social performance.
Better questions lead to better buildings
For clients, the message is not that every overseas material should be avoided, nor that a particular country of origin automatically determines whether a stone is responsibly sourced.
The important issue is visibility, evidence and informed decision-making.
Where did the stone originate? Who quarried and processed it? What does the supplier know about its supply chain? What policies and processes are in place to identify environmental and social risks? And what evidence can be provided?
By using the Ethical Stone Register as part of this process, clients can send a powerful signal to the market: responsible sourcing matters.
Natural stone can create buildings and landscapes that endure for generations. Ensuring that the material has been sourced with appropriate consideration for people, communities and the environment helps ensure that the story behind those projects is every bit as strong as the stone itself.
Find responsibly sourced natural stone suppliers through the Ethical Stone Register at www.ethicalstoneregister.co.uk.
