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Your Green Home: Choosing Sustainable Materials

By Sarah S. Brophy

Whether you’re building new, remodeling, or simply replacing your kitchen floor, thinking green is getting easier—and the results are always worth the effort. Choosing from a growing market of green building products need not be overwhelming—read on for some helpful information.

Sourcing for the Eco-conscious

How do you choose the best products? You source—a new verb. This means you consider:
• The product’s life-cycle costs to the environment
• What the materials are, and how they were extracted, adapted, and combined
• How the materials affect your family’s health
• How much energy is consumed in the manufacture, transportation, and use of the product
• How the product is packaged
• How you’ll use and reuse or dispose of it.

This will help you determine the true extent of the advertised degree of environmental sustainability. 

The most sustainable materials are those that save energy and are made from renewable (preferably rapidly-renewable) resources, or recycled or salvaged materials. The more energy the product saves, and the longer a product lasts, the better; and the more benign the production and transportation process, the better. Local is always best, and while few of us will find all that we need for green building or renovations in our backyards, sourcing materials within 500 miles is the goal.
 
Some products have green certifications, but otherwise there is little consistent labeling, so buyer beware. GreenSeal is sort of Consumer Reports for green products. It’s an independent nonprofit organization that monitors and promotes green products and practices. Their work is based on science and sunshine: their participation in the development of international standards for certifying products and product labeling.

Greenguard is an independent non-profit focusing its certification efforts on emissions levels from materials and equipment, and how they affect indoor air quality. FSC-certified means that someone approved by the Forest Stewardship Council has confirmed the grower’s sustainable practices.  

Exterior & Structure

Proper insulation of roofs and walls, and energy-efficient windows are two places where choosing the right materials can make a big difference. And energy-efficient can be gorgeous too: at the Mensch residence in Annapolis, the owners and the architect didn’t stint with the windows—there are 105—yet this beautiful home is 20 percent more energy-efficient than code requires.

Lately there’s been talk of ‘cool’ roofs—a category of roof that does not contribute to heat islands over solid surfaces. These can be living roofs or reflective roofs like the one shown here, which is made of energy-efficient ‘cool’ asphalt shingles. Ginna Tiernan and her husband Stuart Clarke chose them for their craftsman home in Easton’s historic district.

Instead of absorbing heat, their new roof reflects it, which means the air is cooler above their home and in their attic. The reduced cooling demand in the summer is a great boost for the environment and a relief in electricity costs. The couple paid about $1,500 more (than the cost of non-green materials) for the shingles and the plywood radiant sheathing, but expect to easily recoup that over the roof’s 40-year lifetime. They’ll be ahead in energy savings for themselves, and greenhouse-gas reduction for the world.

Living roofs—the ones with things growing on them—also prevent heat build up in your attic, and capture rainwater that can be reused for irrigation or non-potable needs, or slowly released into the water table or storm drains. They require a normal roof structure, just short of the finish, then the installation of water barriers, growing media, and plantings. Already common in Europe, these roofs are now gaining popularity in the U.S.—and there’s a Maryland supplier of living roof plants at Emory Knoll Farms in Street (Harford County). 

Then there’s building from waste—in this case—straw bales. Hay is the green stuff grown to be eaten; straw is the stalk leftover from grain-growing. Rather than have it burned or wasted, some are using straw in bales as a great insulating material for buildings. Maryland is rich in strawbales—and this practice is catching on.

Michael Furbish and his family live in the strawbale home he built in Pasadena. It’s 2,300 square feet, two floors, and was built using wood framing with strawbales for infill of the exterior walls. The outside is lime stucco plaster, and inside it’s finished with pigmented earthen plaster.  Furbish says that for traditional homeowners strawbale construction is “eminently feasible and performs wonderfully.” He and his family like the simplicity, natural textures, and comfort of strawbale buildings. The construction has terrific insulating properties and contrary to what some might think, it’s not a risk of fire or a problem in humid climates.

The costs can vary widely, as with any house, according to finishes and the complexity of your design. Furbish built this one for about $110 per square foot in 1999. Until the public is more familiar with these home and demand on the east coast increases, the challenge will be finding qualified contractors—but their time is coming.

Interior Surfaces

There are many sustainable options for floors, walls, cabinetry, and countertops. The least expensive wood or wood-comparable on the green market, bamboo, is a favorite—and beautiful too! Widely considered to be a sustainable wood, it can re-grow in three- to five years (while traditional wood sources take 15–40 years to replenish themselves). Bamboo forests sequester more carbon while they grow, and leave less debris at harvest time— and the harvesting is also far less disruptive than that of other trees. Since some bamboo grows a tougher stalk than most traditional wood sources, its products last longer, reducing the need to replace it as often as other materials. The negative effects of this material are travel distance and monocultures (farmers may become so enamored that they plant only bamboo where there once was more diverse plant life). As we begin to develop domestic sources of bamboo, we’ll also address the negative climate affects of shipping it. 

Many sources carry cork and Marmoleum floorings. Cork is great underfoot, and Marmoleum is a design delight—attractive, comfortable flooring, made with natural materials and perfect for coloring. Other names aren’t yet familiar—Plyboo laminated bamboo plywood, Durapalm, Richlite, or Icestone, for example. These manufacturers use waste materials (aged palm trees, recycled glass), rapidly-renewable materials (bamboo and cork), or natural materials (linseed oil, jute, and rosins) to create their products. You can order most with custom coloring.

Do you remember that new-car, new-carpet smell we learned to love? What we are inhaling is really the gasses from less-than-desirable chemicals. Fortunately the carpet industry is beginning to convert to natural products like wool, and recycled materials like nylon. For high-use areas, consider carpet tiles so that you can replace worn and stained tiles instead of a whole floor’s worth of carpet. Natural-fiber area rugs can do the same. When you do replace carpeting, ask your contractor to recycle it for you.

Of course not every green product is appropriate in every situation, so be rigorous as you consider each one’s fit in your home. Calculate for areas with heavy water use or sun exposure; consider traffic and work patterns. And be sure the product’s seller has been trained by the manufacturer to install it.

In Annapolis there’s a group of businesses specializing in sustainable materials, goods and services called Eco Exchange. If you’d like to see some types of materials in use before you decide, visit the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center in Grasonville—it was designed as a source of ideas for selecting materials and systems for your home. And finally, visit our list of local green building sources.

It is important to note that the ultimate in sustainable building is preservation. Building or installing new or newly-made items draws more resources from the environment than does simply restoring an existing building. That’s when salvaged, reclaimed or restored materials become so important. We’ll explore green building in historic houses next time.

More: Green building resources

Sarah Brophy lives in Easton and can’t wait to do a green home renewal.

Tags: sarah s. brophy jul 08