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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. BuildingGreen’s 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.

Using Recycled Materials

To use recycled content in your

building, call suppliers to source photo: Jeremy Faludi
recycled materials. Be sure to Steel recycling plant, with cranes sorting scrap
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 widely-recognized and
credible international standard is Forest Stewardship
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is
Council ("FSC") certification.
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
agricultural waste can qualify both as rapidly-renewable Rapidly-renewables get many harvests
and as recycled content. in the same time as one tree harvest

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 aren’t 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
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
500 mi (800 km) radius around Seattle, Washington, USA
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.)

For short videos that explain some material selection considerations, see: Environmental
Properties of Materials and Physical Properties of Materials (which use product design
examples).