Green Building Materials

Material selection is full of trade-off

decisions, and effective strategies vary
widely based on your goals and
situation. Sustainable materials can
mean many things, and this page
explains some considerations besides
the materials energy performance.

As discussed on the Resource Use and Buildings page, good thermal performance of the
materials in the building envelope can help the building save energy and is usually the most
important factor in building material selection (for example, insulation or thermal mass).
Lifecycle Assessment is the most thorough way to determine the environmental impacts of your
building materials. However, LCA can be very costly, varies project-to-project, and is not yet
extremely prevalent. Instead, the building and building products industries have a host of
measures and certifications for green building products. BuildingGreens Green Building
Product Certification Guide is a fantastic resource for understanding this (sometimes
intentionally) complex world.
The following is a quick rundown of factors about how the material is produced and disposed of
that can be important to consider.

Recycled Materials

Materials using recycled

content not only require less
virgin resources, they also
use less energy and
chemicals to process. For
instance, recycled
("secondary") aluminum has
90% less embodied energy
than virgin ("primary")
aluminum.
It is beneficial to both use
recycled material, and
design your constructions to
be recycled as well.

photo: Jeremy Faludi

Steel recycling plant, with cranes sorting scrap

Using Recycled
Materials
To use recycled content in your building, call suppliers to source recycled materials. Be sure to
verify the physical properties (strength, stiffness, etc.) of the material with recycled content. If
they are lower-performance, you may need to alter your design to use slightly more
material. This is usually still a net benefit environmentally.
Perhaps the easiest way to create a large improvement from recycled content is in concrete,
because it is used in such large quantities. Concrete can recycle fly ash from coal-fired power
plants, and slag from the blast furnaces of steel production, among other materials. Be aware,
however, that these materials may contain toxins like mercury; if so, they should not be directly
exposed to occupants.
Some building materials already have recycled content by default. For instance, most structural
steel contains 90% recycled content, while sheet steel usually contains around 25% recycled
content. Aluminum for curtain walls generally has no recycled content.

Making Recyclable Constructions

Materials are only recycled when the monetary value of the materials is greater than the cost to
separate them out from other materials.

To make your building (or parts of your building) recyclable, design for disassembly. That is,
make it easy to separate different kinds of materials from each other. Some strategies for this
include using as few different kinds of materials as possible, using undoable fasteners (e.g.
screws rather than nails or epoxies), and using larger assemblies that have greater value than
small pieces.

Reused Materials
Reused materials are even more beneficial than
recycled materials, because in addition to saving
natural resources, they also require far less
manufacturing. However, it may not be zero
manufacturing. Reclaimed wood, for instance, is
often planed or otherwise cleaned up for reuse.
You can also make it easy to reuse the materials
from your own building by designing for
disassembly. This means using constructions that
are easy to separate from each other.

photo: Jeremy Faludi

Reclaimed wood often requires
processing

Sustainably Harvested
Materials
Sustainable harvesting is the practice of harvesting
a resource no faster than it can regrow, so that
there is no net depletion of the resource or damage
to the ecosystem.
The most common form of this is sustainable
forestry for wood products.
The proof of sustainable harvesting is generally in
third-party certification. The most widelyrecognized and credible international standard
is Forest Stewardship Council ("FSC")
certification.

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is

the most widely recognized third party
sustainable forestry certification.

Some tropical hardwoods grow so slowly and are from such delicate ecosystems that there is
controversy about whether they can be sustainably harvested while still remaining economical
for use in buildings. You may wish to avoid sourcing these, or perform extra due diligence when
sourcing them.

Rapidly Renewable Materials

Rapidly renewable materials are those that grow
back very quickly. These can be sustainably
harvested at a fairly high rate, so there is less
burden of proof for certification as for wood
products.
Many rapidly-renewable materials allow many
harvests from the same plant. For instance, cutting
bamboo is like clipping grass, and cork trees are
skinned of a layer of bark rather than cut down.
Even some plants that do not provide more than one
harvest are rapidly-renewable. Products made from

Rapidly-renewables get many harvests

in the same time as one tree harvest

agricultural waste can qualify both as rapidlyrenewable and as recycled content.

These products are generally used for interior finishes, though some buildings have used bamboo
for structural elements as well.

Non-Toxic Materials
The toxicity of a material is measured and published in its Materials Safety Data Sheet

(MSDS). However, these documents can require chemistry expertise to understand.

For those without toxicology expertise, some organizations and green building certification
systems have created lists of substances to avoid. Here is once such list, from the Living
Building Challenge:
Asbestos
Cadmium
Chlorinated Polyethylene and Chlorosulfonated Polyethlene

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
Chloroprene (Neoprene)
Formaldehyde (added)
Halogenated Flame Retardants
Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs)
Lead (added)
Mercury
Petrochemical Fertilizers and Pesticides
Phthalates
Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)
Wood treatments containing Creosote, Arsenic or Pentachlorophenol
(source)
These substances are usually not advertised in products, but can be present as fire retardants,
adhesives, stabilizers, refrigerant gases ("working fluids"), and other ingredients. Some of these
substances are classified as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) which can slowly off-gas
and can cause health risks in buildings that arent properly ventilated (see Indoor Air Quality).
Even materials that do not cause concerns about indoor air quality for the building's occupants
can still carry toxicity risk for construction workers and manufacturing workers. Some materials
can also leach toxins to groundwater when they are rained on.
Manufacturers are starting to communicate more about the presence of VOCs in their products
(like paints and composite wood products). However, some due diligence is required to ensure
harmful chemicals and VOCs are not present in the products you source.
In addition to lists referenced above, the health impacts of specific building products are
becoming easier to understand and compare because of industry efforts like the Pharos
Project (from the Healthy Building Network).

Local Materials

Local materials are any kind

of material grown or
manufactured within a
certain radius of the
building site. They are also
called "regional" materials,
because the radius is often
large, such as 500 miles
(800km).
The goal of local material
use is to avoid the
ecological impacts of
500 mi (800 km) radius around Seattle, Washington, USA
transportation, and to
support local
economies. For most materials, transportation is a much smaller impact than resource extraction
and manufacturing, so it is a low priority environmentally (source Journal of Green Building:
Winter 2012, Vol. 7, No. 1).
However, local materials benefit to local economies can be significant. One of the only ways
green building certifications encourage local economies is by giving credit for local materials.

Other lifecycle considerations

High structural performance, being strong but lightweight.

High durability, giving the building a long life.
High acoustical performance, absorbing or blocking sound for better occupant comfort. (This
helps lengthen building lifetime and increases use.)