How To Go Green With Home Building Materials

by JakesDad

How To Go Green With Home Building Materials

Home building materials need not cost the earth. Going green with home building materials simply means using timber and other products that have been recycled. In fact, just because other people have thrown it out does not mean that there is anything wrong with it. They may simply be renovating and have decided to change from one product to another.

And it is not only from home renovations that such timber and other building materials can be sourced. Construction sites have quite a bit of waste that is thrown into the dumpster and taken out to go into landfill at the local tip. This is timber, tiles and many other building materials that have been over-ordered and are now excess to the job in hand. Builders usually over order so that there will be no problems with replacing things such as tiles that may get broken. Very often it is impossible to get an exact match, so over-ordering is considered cheaper than having to throw the lot away because you were a few tiles short.

Timber excess sometimes comes from off-cuts but often you can also get full lengths of timber that are ideal for the home handyman. There is excess here because builders buy timber in set amounts and even if they only use half of it, the full amount must be purchased.

Using home building materials from recycled sources means that the earth's resources have been saved. It is not only the trees that now don't need to be cut down, but the fuel and cost of cutting them up and transporting them that has been saved.

Peak Moment 119: Builder and author Shay Salomon finds that the happiest home builders are often the ones with the smallest houses. They're less costly to build and maintain, more likely to be finished, use fewer resources and help people simplify their lives. One version of "smaller" is to share a house, which can ease our loneliness while building our social network. Co-founder of the Small House Society, Shay notes that scaling down can enable a ratcheting up of our whole lifestyle, as we revalue quality over quantity. Declaring "Enough", she says, is the most ecological thing one can do. [ www.littlehouseonasmallplanet.com ]
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