Green Homes From the Ground Up: How the Materials Used to Build Your House Can Be The Most Important Sustainability Decision
When most people consider making their homes 'green' or 'sustainable,' they gravitate to the same typical solutions:
Purchasing appliances and devices that are more energy efficient;
Upgrading the building envelope through insulation and high-performance windows; or even
Committing to personal habit changes, like turning the lights off more or only running the dishwasher when it's full.
These solutions are all valuable, and they should certainly be taken into account for most households.
Among the most exciting ways to ensure a home is green, though, is one that you likely can't embrace if your home has already been built: ensuring the homes are made from sustainable and/or recycled materials.
So, perhaps it's too late for you to adopt this strategy of making your home as environmentally- and climate-friendly as possible. But take a look at some of these existing options that serve as inspiration for you in the future should you decide to ubild a truly green home from the ground up.
Homes Made From Recycled Materials
Start with the boldest choice in green building materials, consider this list of eight homes that were made mostly or entirely from recycled materials. It's not what you're thinking, though. While some ingenious buildings have indeed been crafted using plastic bottles as one of the building materials, these recycled-material homes might not even be noticeably different from neighboring houses.
For example, this townhouse in the Netherlands is built with bricks that are actually made out of 15 tons of waste material that's been ground up and reformed into bricks:
Source: CBS News
Taking more directly recycled building materials, this home in Mumbai is actually built largely using doors and windows of other buildings that had been demolished in the city, thus removing those building materials from a presumed destination in a landfill while also preventing the need for new building materials to be created:
Source: CBS News
One trend that you may have actually heard about are small buildings created from discarded shipping containers. Such shipping containers are already sturdy and can withstand the elements, so they are perfect to be reused for small buildings such as sheds or even guest houses, like the below Container Guest House in San Antonio, Texas:
Source: CBS News
Not only are all these homes more efficiently and sustainably sourced and in some cases stronger, but because they embrace recycled materials as building materials they are inherently more affordable as well.
Sustainable Building Materials
If going full-on recycled materials for your new home is a step too far, then you still have options when it comes to ensuring your home goes green from the floor to the roof.
One material you'll want to invest in heavily is bamboo, which is considered one of the most eco-friendly building materials out there.
Unlike lumber, which comes from trees that take decades to grow, bamboo can grow up to three feet in a single day given the right species and conditions. Further, bamboo can doesn't even need to be cut down to be harvested, so it continues to grow back after removing the needed material (like the grass that it technically is).
Just as the cherry on the top, bamboo is so lightweight that its transport will require less energy and cause fewer emissions. Because of its strength and durability, bamboo is a terrific sustainable option for floors or cabinets.
Take it a step further, though, there are homes in Thailand and Vietnam constructed entirely from bamboo.
Source; Sustainable Build
Another suitable construction material to integrate into your home is cork. Similar to bamboo, cork can be harvested without chopping down the entire tree which grows it (cork is a tree bark).
Once harvested, cork's key characteristics are its:
Flexibility,
Resilience,
Shock absorption,
Fire resistance, and
Impermeability to water.
These qualities mean cork is very adaptable as a building material, having been used as:
Floor tiles,
Insulation sheets,
Subflooring,
Thermal insulation, and more.
Consider, for example, this entire studio that integrates cork from Selencky Parsons:
Source: Arch Daily
Many sustainble building materials are available outside of those two, including:
Reclaimed wood,
Hemp, and
The point is that there are a multitude of options for sustainable materials in constructing each aspect of your next home. You need not feel like the traditional or typical materials pushed by architects and construciton companies are the only options out there. Don't be afraid to think different, push for the next innovation, and research out some of these sleek and sustainable designs that eco-conscious builders have created.
Your home should be a reflection of yourself, so if sustainability matters to you then you should be surrounded by four walls and covered by a roof that exude those principles.