Just ask the three little pigs (especially the first two): Choosing the right building materials for your house is an important decision with serious consequences. The wolf might not be at your door, but knowing how to choose sustainable materials can help you protect the environment and your family’s health.
As if you didn’t have enough to think about when building or buying a home, choosing sustainable materials requires you to consider a few more questions: Are your construction materials sustainably produced? Are they made with chemicals that might be toxic to you and your family? Are they energy—and resource—efficient? Will they be easy to dispose of responsibly?
Fortunately, several organizations make it easier to find those answers.
Good Wood: FSC Certification
Well-managed forests can minimize logging’s impact on the environment and help maintain future supplies of forest products. To ensure that the wood that frames and covers your house and floors was harvested responsibly, look for certification by
the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an independent organization that accredits, monitors, and audits timber concerns.
An FSC seal on a product—whether it’s flooring, furniture, lumber, or even paper—assures you that the wood was harvested in a sustainable manner from a healthy forest, without using destructive techniques like massive clear-cutting and logging in old-growth forests, and that chemical use was minimized or eliminated.
Businesses ranging from national home-improvement chains to your local lumberyard sell certified-wood products. Some furniture manufacturers also use certified woods in many of the products they sell.
Be aware that not all certification programs are credible. Spurred by consumer and wood industry demand, other forest certification programs have sprung up, many of which set lax standards for forest management that allow destructive forestry practices. Be sure to ask for FSC-certified wood only.
From Carpet to Lighting: Green Seal
For a wider range of products, including paint, appliances, carpet, lighting, finishes, air conditioning, and particleboard, look for the Green Seal. Green Seal is an independent, nonprofit organization that identifies and promotes products and services that cause less toxic pollution and waste, conserve resources and habitats, and minimize global warming and ozone depletion.
