Ecoeffective Consulting Services
Offered by Tom Gibson

Obtaining sustainable materials
for your green building project

A major part of designing any green building or renovation project is finding sustainable materials to use for it. This can prove a daunting and complex task full of unknowns in this age when green building is just starting to become mainstream and standards and accepted practices are evolving. Several organizations, such as the Environmental Design & Construction and Architectural Record magazines, have created online searchable databases of materials and products. But while these are useful, they barely begin to cover the spectrum of choices and possibilities.

My services in procuring green building materials and products for your project can run the gamut from putting you in touch with companies offering suitable products to conducting extensive analysis to engineer new material solutions and determine the true ecoeffectiveness of materials. As examples, I can line you up with companies that manufacture carpet tiles from recycled materials, roof tiles made from scrap tires to look like slate, non-toxic pressure-treated lumber, or blown cellulose attic insulation made from old newspapers.

For starters, any effort to obtain green materials for a project should start with an inside-out local search. What is available right in your own back yard? Many wonderful new products are offered these days in the name of ecosustainability, but if they’re manufactured hundreds or thousands of miles away, the transportation costs involved diminish their true ecoeffectiveness. In addition, using local materials keeps things in the local economy and can help maintain local architectural themes. As examples of local materials, if you’re building a super-insulating strawbale house, bales of straw may be available from local farmers, depending on the market. If an old barn is being torn down, it may be possible to salvage timbers or the exterior siding wood. If an old factory, school, or office building is being demolished, the bricks or steel beams from it may be usable.

In some cases, there may be opportunities to develop customized materials for your application. If a unique material source exists nearby, we can arrange for fabrication capabilities in the area to turn it into something useful with added value. As a simple example, sawmills have converted timbers from old barns into elegant hardwood flooring. In western Pennsylvania, an environmental company reclaimed iron oxide from spent coal mines and converted it for use as a pigment in paint, concrete, and mulch.

As the ultimate level of procuring ecoeffective materials, I can conduct life cycle analysis on products, which involves looking at factors like transportation costs, embedded energy, and final disposal. This leads to the selection of the most environmentally beneficial products. Many green products -- for example, plastic lumber -- involve converting a recycled material into something else. This is a good start, but what happens to it when it reaches the end of its life in its new form? Some experts dub this as “downcycling,” and say it merely slows its path to the landfill. A truly green product follows a cradle-to-cradle pattern and can be recycled over and over into its same form, or recycled back to the earth by composting.

Contact Tom Gibson at 570-568-8444 or tom@progressiveengineer.com to discuss your needs

Progressive Engineer
Editor: Tom Gibson
2049 Crossroads Drive, Lewisburg, PA 17837
570-568-8444 * tom@progressiveengineer.com
©2006 Progressive Engineer