Green Building Materials: A Guide to Product Selection and Specification

 

For building design that looks to history for recycling our past and that re-imagines our future, there’s no need to look any further than Green Building Materials: A Guide to Product Selection and Specification by Ross Spiegel and Dru Meadows. Amazon calls it “the ultimate user’s manual to green building materials.”

 

This is a brilliant hands-on guide to today’s broad variety of green building materials – what they are, where to locate them, and how builders can use them efficiently. It has useful information on green product choices, product specification, and building processes.

 

The second edition contains updated information on LEEDs requirements and how to incorporate them into the specifications process and new sections on commissioning and on construction waste management. Other features include strategies on how to assess the “greenness” of building materials, useful sample forms to assist in selecting and specifying materials, and a short history of applicable environmental legislation.

 

The use of green building materials and products is a vital strategy in the design of a building. They offer definite benefits to the building owner and residents, such as reduced repair and replacement costs over the life of the building, energy savings, better occupant health and productivity, lower costs connected with changing space configurations, and superior design flexibility.

 

In chapter one of Green Building Materials, the authors assert that

The people in charge of every building project must consider the impact it will have on the environment into which it will be placed, locally and globally.

 

This is a question of sustainability, and the authors go on to compare it to the Native American concept of discussion with the as yet unborn future generations for their participation in major decisions, which will ultimately affect them.

 

Authors Ross Spiegel and Dru Meadows are nationally known experts on green building methods and materials. They offer a valuable resource for designing environmentally friendly, sustainable buildings.