Improve Your Home’s Sustainability With Natural Stone
Are you considering remodeling, building a new home, or just wondering how to improve your dream home’s sustainability? Consider natural stone!
Browsing the "Green building materials" Tag
Cellulose Insulation – The ABCs of Green Building Materials
Made from consumer paper products, cellulose insulation typically contains about 85 percent recycled content. Using this green building material can effectively lower the carbon footprint of your home or business property. Essentially, this is because cellulose insulation is plant cell matter that is still storing the carbon sequestered when it was alive. Responsible management of […]
Brush & Wattle — The ABCs of Green Building Materials
The age-old construction techniques employed in traditional brush and wattle structures are time-tested and worthy of great respect. “Touching the Earth lightly,” these techniques are both low-impact on the natural environment and highly sustainable, employing the most natural and abundant of green building materials. Brush, referring to tree branches, twigs, leaves, and bark, has been […]
Bricks – The ABCs of Green Building Materials
In terms of sustainability and green building materials, brick is probably king. The process of making fired clay bricks has been around for over 5,000 years and just keeps getting greener. Today’s brick kilns use about 70 percent less energy to fire bricks than just 50 years ago. Brick is a term usually referring to […]
Blocks – The ABCs of Green Building Materials
Blocks used for residential and commercial construction employ a wide variety of green building materials in their composition. The most popular and commonly used is the standard hollow concrete block, but there are many variations in shape, weight, and composition. Sand, cement, gravel, and water are the most commonly used elements in blocks, but there […]
Bamboo – The ABCs of Green Building Materials
Bamboo is a truly remarkable green building material. It’s twice as strong as concrete and slightly stronger than steel. It’s also a renewable resource that needs little energy to grow, prevents soil erosion, provides biomass, offers wildlife refuge, and produces a healthy food supply for both wildlife and humans. Offering significant remediation from the effects […]
Aluminum – The ABCs of Green Building Materials
Used in a wide variety of ways in the building construction market, aluminum is a very versatile green building material, especially when it’s recycled. Everything from huge external building structures to delicate window blinds can be manufactured from this lightweight, durable, and corrosion-resistant metal. Doors, windows, and awnings are popular products made from this material, […]
The ABCs of Green Building Materials – Adobe (New Series!)
Green building materials are as diverse as Earth itself. Some of the most sustainable materials on the planet are modern inventions, and some are as old as the hills, like adobe. Familiarizing yourself with the best green building materials will help ensure your environmentally friendly projects enjoy sustainable success. Over the next several weeks, watch […]
BioMason Makes Zero Emissions Bricks Without Heat
BioMason makes bricks from sand using the same process that nature uses to make coral reefs. It uses no heat and creates no carbon emissions.
Market for Green Building Materials Set to Soar Through 2019
Green building is here to stay! As if there were any doubt, a recent study by BCC Research has shown that the market for green building materials has been increasing and will continue to climb at least through 2019, when it is expected to reach $69 billion in the US alone. Currently, the US market […]
Green Building With Renewable Rice Straw
For every ton of rice that is grown, 500 lbs of rice husks and straw are created. Typically, those husks and straw are burned as waste. But two innovations on opposite sides of the world are changing that. In India, 16-year-old Bisman Deu saw all those rice husks being burned and wondered whether they couldn’t be […]
Building a Tiny House With Straw Bales
According to Click Green, hay bales can make an affordable, energy efficient, and sustainable tiny house that can keep you and yours safe and warm far off the grid. The bales have 75% more insulating power than a traditional stud wall filled with fiberglass insulation, and are non-combustible because they have little to no oxygen […]
High-tech Fiberboard Made from Waste Fiber
There’s a new green building material on the market that is light, strong, and flexible, and can be made into just about any shape, including complex molded shapes, without the need for any glues, harmful chemicals, or toxic ingredients. This material, called ECOR, is a high-strength fiberboard made using only water, heat, fiber, and pressure, […]
Leadership in Sustainable Manufacturing: Ecovative Design
This is a business feature worth sharing. Ecovative Design features a shining example for manufacturing building materials on a sustainable basis. It grows the insulating products it manufactures and sells.
Living Buildings of the Future
In what sounds like the premise for a science fiction B movie, researchers are trying to create protocells which (among other things) can be painted onto buildings. These cells will react with CO2 in the air and form a limestone shell over the buildings which will get thicker as more CO2 builds up on them. […]