Sustainable Building Materials Emerging as Valuable Opportunities Now

Sustainable Building Materials Are Now Standard

Today, sustainable building materials are something that turned into a standard. To have sustainable buildings is not the way of the future, it’s today. It’s so hip today.

Everything needs to be sustainable. What we’re talking about are materials made out of recycled products. It means products that don’t travel long distances from the plant that made them. We’re talking about products that are natural to the environment, to the local area. We’re talking about plants that are native to the area as well. There are so many opportunities to find recycled products made out of recycled waste. That’s happening all the time.

Demolition Today Means Recycling

We were watching a demolition of a building here next door. They had real high recycled material requirements. We saw them taking apart the building and saving all the lumber that was in there, setting it aside. All the metal piled up in one place. All the copper put in one place. They’re taking it to different plants to recycle that into sustainable building materials.

It is an art now that is taking place. To be able to break that building apart in a careful way, to be able to recycle all those products, is the right thing to do. There is a great quality of product that’s coming out today. There are some real high-end products are out there. And you would never guess that they’re made out of recycled products. There is a solid industry that has exploded over the last 20 years.

Sustainable Materials in Building Products

Sustainable products are everything. You can recycle carpet. You can recycle concrete, lumber, insulation materials. There are products that aren’t sustainable. There are products that are friendly to the environment – like LED lights, for example. You could meet the energy requirements in a building through recycled products. There is so much that you can do.

And then you combine sustainable building materials with proper design. How that building comes together, how you detailed that wall. How you detailed those floors and ceilings. Then, how it all comes together with natural daylighting. All with the proper orientation of the building.

Building Orientation

An orientation can provide a building with some good energy savings. This is because the light is coming in the proper way. Or it could be that it’s oriented where the colder side has areas that are not in use. Or it’s the side that is facing the north.

The warmer side where the people might be, where they would prefer, would be facing south. Or they could use daylighting. So, then you’re cutting back on your energy for heating and cooling. But, also you are saving energy in daylighting. There are so many things you can incorporate into a building with sustainable building materials. These products can work together to make an energy efficient and sustainable building.