Know Your Green Materials?

With SIPs available with insulation ratings up to R-60, their insulation value makes them pretty darn green, potentially saving you lots of money on heating and cooling over the years. While some manufacturers are starting to use bio-based materials for insulation, many still use expanded polystyrene, a fossil fuel based product, so, though the materials aren't always the greenest, they have a great green effect on your home.

Read more:

Green Materials Guide: Building Blocks

Structural Insulated Panels and You

GreenBuild: Agriboard Structural Insulated Panels

While solid wood can be the greener choice, it isn't always, and there are several inputs that affect the greenness of different materials. If the composites use recycled materials, like sawdust and wood chips, and adhesives and finishes free of formaldehyde and other chemicals that contribute to poor indoor air quality, then those materials can be greener than solid wood, especially if that wood doesn't come from sustainable sources.

Read more:

Green Materials Guide: Flooring

Watch Out for Formaldehyde in your Home this Summer

Get the Scoop on Green Wood Furniture

While all insulation can be considered green to a degree, since it helps you save energy in your home, bio-based spray foam combines green materials -- no formaldehyde, no VOCs, no petroleum-based compounds -- with really high performance; properly installed, it won't shrink and adheres to surrounding structures to create a nice tight seal. Other options use recycled materials, and increase the energy efficiency of your home, but none combine materials and performance as well as these spray foams.

Read more:

Green Materials Guide: Insulation

TreeHugger Picks: Green Insulation

Green Alternatives to Traditional Insulation

Converting Non-Believers with Spray Foam Insulation

Though there are many different kinds of windows, that operate in different ways and serve different functions, windows that provide proper ventilation are increasingly skipped over in favor of aesthetics and more air conditioning. So, old windows, that can help regulate and ventilate your home, are worth hanging on to; if you're concerned about them being a little leaky in the winter, look into fixing them before you replace, unless they are cheap sashless slider windows, since they don't have much ventilation value.

Read more:

Green Materials Guide: Windows

Building the Green Modern Home: Looking at Windows

Why Old Windows are Green Windows

Green Your Home For Winter: Weatherize Your Windows

Bamboo has become a darling of the green material world, but it's not always the greenest choice. It's great that it's more rapidly renewable than wood, but finding a source for bamboo that's green can be tricky. If it doesn't come from a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified source, bamboo likely isn't the greenest choice.

Read more:

Green Materials Guide: Flooring

Bamboo Flooring - Is It Really Treehugger Green?

Buy Green: Bamboo Flooring

Utilizing high performance triple-glazed windows, super-insulation, an airtight building shell, and other slick design features, Passive House designs cut heating and cooling energy consumption by a whopping 90 percent. The only real moving part in the system is a ventilation fan and heat exchanger, since the air-tight design needs fresh air, and it has big-time energy saving potential if you can put the design to work for you from the start.

Read more:

Green Materials Guide: Heating and Cooling

Denmark Debuts First Certified Passive House

How to Go Green: Home Heating

While wood can be a pretty green material, it loses a few points because it isn't very durable as a countertop. Granite has to be mined from the ground (not a green process), concrete has a huge carbon footprint and embodied energy bill, so terrazzo takes the cake here. Up to 95 percent of it can be recycled material, at, with an expected lifespan of 40 years or more, it could be the last countertop you ever buy.

Read more:

Green Materials Guide: Kitchen

How Green Are Recycled Countertops?

Recycled Glass and Concrete Countertops

While dual-flush toilets definitely use less water than any conventional toilet, they get beaten out by both composting toilets and waterless urinals. Both of those really low-water options don't fit in every bathroom, though, so dual-flush can be the greenest way to go, depending on the design limitations of your bathroom.

Read more:

Green Materials Guide: Bathrooms

How to Go Green: In the Bathroom

How green is your toilet?

Dual Flush Toilet by Caroma

For a paint to be labeled "low-VOC," latex paints must contain fewer than 250 grams per liter and alkyd paints fewer than 380 g/liter, while "no-VOC" paints are limited to five grams per liter. However, these tests are often done before pigments ? a major source of VOCs ? are added, so there's definitely a little wiggle room in there. To find the greenest option, look for "no-VOC" and if you get home and smell something funny, take it back and try something else.

Read more:

Green Materials Guide: Wallcoverings

Ask TreeHugger: Household Green Paint Alternatives

Buy Green: Interior Paint

Because most of the production is local -- many of the raw materials needed can often come literally from your backyard -- rammed earth has 90 percent less embodied energy than concrete, while being just about as durable. Because of its combination of durability, ease of repair, and low embodied energy, rammed earth is one of the greenest flooring options you can choose, if it fits your flooring situation.

Read more:

Green Materials Guide: Flooring

"Track That Mud In!" Earthen Floors Are Hot

Install a Natural Earthen Floor

Best of Green: Best Green Material - Dirt