Building a new home, office, or other commercial building and you want to be as eco friendly but you’re not sure where to start? Well, the good news is that finding good green building materials isn’t really that hard: you don’t need to source rare earth metals or find rare materials in the Amazon Jungle. Rather, constructing any type of physical structure in an eco-friendly way is all about follow-through and just making sure it gets done!
What do I mean by that? Take ordinary concrete for example. Guess what? Normal concrete is recyclable. Other recyclable materials are steel, plastic, and wood for example. These were and still are considered normal building materials. They don’t have any special eco-friendly properties that other materials don’t have. They already are good green building materials
Now, what about flooring? What are good eco-friendly materials to use? Cork, leather, rubber, wool carpeting, linoleum, glass tiles, bamboo, and other recycled woods. Not complicated is it?
Sourcing and Supervision
The point is that if you want to go green, it’s all about sourcing and supervision. Do some research on your local area and find out which companies sell building materials made from recycled products. When sourcing a contractor, does your contractor brag about and pride themselves on the use of eco-friendly products?
Chances are, if a contractor markets themselves as being eco-friendly, it’s because they actually are and they know that being eco-friendly
is “a la mode” these days and that isn’t likely to change any time soon if at all in your lifetime or mine. What contractors also know is that people who are building a new home, for example, and want to be green, watch what you’re doing very closely during the construction process and that any attempt to lie to them about your eco-friendly practices will likely result in them getting booted from the job, accompanied by a 1-star review on Google.
Go Local
Now when sourcing your contractor and building materials, source local. What good is it to have an eco-friendly contractor that has to drive back and forth from your job site while guzzling half a tank of gas? What good is it to source eco-friendly building materials if they have to be shipped across the country? Now electric vehicles are on the rise but lots of people, including contractors, still drive gasoline-powered vehicles. So until the whole world goes electric, you must pay special attention to where you source your building materials from and how far your preferred contractor is located from your job site. Hope this helps!
