Where Do You Buy Sustainable Building Materials (21 Shops)?
Building with sustainable materials can save you money on utility bills and boost your home’s resale value, besides protecting the environment.
While some green building products are widely available, others have limited distribution.
If you’re aiming to build an eco-friendly building, it helps to know where to buy the right materials.
Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Amazon are the best places to buy sustainable building materials. They sell a range of green construction products, including framing materials obtained from renewable resources and plumbing fixtures that minimize water consumption.
This guide will show you companies where you can purchase sustainable building materials for new construction and renovation projects.
Let’s get started.
1. Home Depot: Framing Lumber
Compared to steel and concrete, wood is a much more sustainable construction material, especially if it is sourced from sustainably managed forests.
As wood can be grown and harvested on the same patch of land multiple times, it’s a highly renewable resource.
Also, off-cuts produced during construction and other wood waste can be transformed into other valuable products.
If unusable for construction purposes, wood waste is biodegradable, leaving little lasting legacy and reducing environmental pollution. As a building material, wood is more energy-efficient and has a lower carbon footprint than common alternatives.
You can buy framing lumber and other construction wood products for new building and remodeling projects from Home Depot.
2. Lowe’s: Clay Bricks
Clay brick is an ancient construction material with many outstanding properties. The bricks are primarily made of clay, an abundant resource.
Moreover, clay for making these types of bricks can come from mining and construction sites, reducing the wastage of natural resources. Additionally, clay bricks are recyclable at the end of their service life in a building.
In addition to being a material made from abundant natural resources, clay brick enhances a building’s thermal storage and noise insulation properties.
Lowe’s sells clay bricks that can be used to build walls, foundations, and fences. This retailer also stocks various clay-based flooring products, including ceramic tiles.
3. Amazon: Low-Flow Plumbing Fixtures
Water is a precious but limited resource. As a result, conserving water is central to sustainability efforts. Amazon sells an array of plumbing fixtures that help curb water wastage and save money.
You’ll find low-flow toilets, showerheads, and sink faucets that can reduce your green home’s water consumption by as much as 60% compared to standard fixtures.
4. US Engineered Wood: Tstud for Framed Building
US Engineered Wood’s Tstud is designed to replace standard lumber members in frame constructions.
This engineered wood green building material is more energy-efficient than traditional studs. It also has sound insulation properties, saving the cost of soundproofing your house.
5. Standard Panel: SIP Panels
Structural Insulated Panels (SIP) are engineered building materials that provide excellent insulation and improve the energy efficiency of your green home.
The panels come predesigned and only need to be assembled on the construction site. The material can be used on roofs, walls, and ceilings, giving highly energy-efficient homes.
Building with SIP panels requires less labor and reduces on-site waste. You can purchase SIP panels from Standard Panel.
6. Plastic Lumber Yard: Recycled Plastic Lumber
Plastic Lumber looks like wood lumber, except it’s made from plastic waste that would otherwise be in oceans or landfills.
Stronger and more durable than wood lumber, plastic lumber can be used as a structural or decorative material in construction.
Plastic Lumber Yard sells plastic lumber products suitable for various sustainable building projects.
7. Elmwood Reclaimed Timber: Reclaimed Wood Materials
Although hardwood harvesting can adversely affect the environment because of deforestation, building with reclaimed wood products can help the environment.
Elmwood Reclaimed Timber sells reclaimed wood beams, shelves, and other products.
8. Material Warehouse: Hemp Insulation
An excellent insulation solution should contribute to making your home sustainable. The insulation lowers your property’s carbon footprint by reducing heating and cooling energy consumption.
The problem is that many insulation materials are sourced unsustainably. Hemp insulation is a sustainable alternative because it is made of the hemp plant, making it a renewable material.
Moreover, hemp insulation performs better than many other insulation solutions, including cellulose and fiberglass. It also sequesters carbon from the atmosphere in the plant itself, helping to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
Material Warehouse sells HempWool, a sustainably sourced and non-toxic insulation material. The product is available in various thickness options.
Hemp is great option for sustainable building, we’ve written an article about some of hemp’s uses in construction here if you’d like to find out more.
9. GAF Energy: Solar Shingles For Green Building
GAF Energy’s Timberline Solar is a roofing product that performs the double task of covering the roof and generating solar power. You can use a single installer for the roofing and the solar electricity system.
Besides saving you money on power bills and reducing your home’s carbon emissions, GAF Energy’s solar shingles also give you a beautiful roof.
10. ByFusion: ByBlocks (Sustainable Building Materials)
ByBlocks are made from plastic waste. They can be used in place of concrete blocks to build walls.
Apart from helping reduce plastics going to landfills, ByBlocks produce durable walls that are water and cracking resistant.
Moreover, ByBlocks have significantly lower carbon emissions than conventional concrete. You can buy ByBlocks from ByFusion.
11. Cali Bamboo: Bamboo Flooring
Bamboo is a strong, durable, and beautiful natural material with broad application potential in the construction industry. It can be used as a structural or finishing material in construction.
The bamboo tree grows rapidly, and its harvesting has a minimal environmental impact, earning products made from bamboo the right to call themselves green building materials.
Moreover, processing bamboo products produces little waste, which minimizes environmental impact.
Cali Bamboo supplies a broad array of bamboo flooring materials.
Cali Bamboo’s bamboo products boast twice the density of conventional hardwood flooring. Moreover, many featured products on the company’s website come with a 50-year warranty.
More information is available on bamboo in construction in our other article here.
12. iCorkFloor: Cork Flooring and Soundproofing
Cork is a natural material obtained from tree bark harvested from the cork oak tree. It can be harvested without cutting down the tree, making it highly renewable.
The material has many desirable properties in the construction industry. For example, it’s lightweight, durable, water-resistant, and affordable. Moreover, cork has thermal and sound insulation properties.
In pursuing sustainable flooring solutions, many homeowners are turning to cork tiles. iCorkFloor supplies cork tiles for floors and walls. The products are available in a large range of colors, textures, and design options.
With cork tiles, you achieve thermal insulation, soundproofing, and waterproofing with a single product. Cork tiles can be ideal for studio environments.
13. SmartLam: Mass Timber Construction Materials
Mass timber is a new category of green building materials. The manufacturing process bonds multiple wood pieces, including those that would otherwise be wasted.
Mass timber products can be used in construction as alternatives to concrete and steel. Except in the case of recycled steel, mass timber products have a lower carbon footprint and reduce on-site waste.
SmartLam manufactures various mass timber products ideal for floors, roofs, and walls.
14. Smart Glass Country: Smart Glass Windows
Installing smart glass on your windows can reduce your heating and cooling power bills. Smart glass turns your windows translucent in summer months to block the sun’s heat, reducing cooling electricity consumption and making your home more energy efficient.
The glass turns the window transparent in winter, letting in more sunlight to boost indoor heating and cut down on energy use.
Smart Glass Country sells smart glass products for new windows and smart films that can be installed on existing windows.
15. Cemex: Ashcrete for Cement Replacement
Ashcrete is made from byproducts of coal power plants. It can be used to replace or complement cement in the concrete mix.
Ashcrete is stronger and more durable than conventional concrete. Moreover, ashcrete consumes less water in the curing process and produces structures that are more resistant to fire and acid.
Cemex is a leading fly ash supplier, the coal industry byproduct used to make ashcrete.
16. Andersen: Eco-Friendly Windows and Doors
The materials you choose for your windows and doors can greatly impact your home’s environmental impact. Aluminum windows and doors can last longer than wood because the material is resistant to many weather and insect-degrading factors.
Moreover, aluminum metal is recyclable, which reduces waste. Andersen is a leading manufacturer of aluminum windows and doors.
17. Stark: Wool Carpet
Wool is a beautiful, comfortable, durable, and renewable material. Wool carpets can transform your floor’s appearance and require little maintenance.
Stark provides a variety of wool carpets and rugs made from natural materials. Homeowners can also order custom wool products from Stark.
18. Tile Estate: Recycled Glass Flooring Tiles
Glass is renewable, making it a sustainable building material to consider. Tile Estate sells glass tiles made from broken glass products.
You can use these tiles for pool interiors and bathroom and kitchen walls. Since glass reflects light, glass tiles can also help you to use less energy and reduce your lighting electricity bills.
19. American Floor Mats: Recycled Rubber Tiles
Reducing waste is a central part of sustainability. American Floor Mats sells rubber tiles made from recycled materials, such as truck and aircraft tires.
As a result, flooring with rubber tiles reduces waste that goes to landfill. Rubber tiles are easy to install and ideal for high-traffic areas. American Floor Mats tiles are available in a variety of colors.
20. Ecotile: Recycled Plastic Flooring Tiles
An industry leader, Ecotile makes a broad array of plastic tiles for flooring. The products include recycled plastic material. Moreover, Ecotile plastic tiles are fully recyclable at the end of their life.
Aside from reducing plastic waste, plastic tiles are more durable than many standard options.
21. Sustainable Materials: Flexible Concrete Panels
Bendable or flexible concrete materials may be the future of the construction industry.
They offer breakthrough solutions to many flaws of traditional concrete.
For example, they’re up to 500 times more resistant to cracking than traditional concrete, even compared with precast concrete slabs made under controlled conditions in a factory.
Moreover, flexible concrete construction materials have self-healing capability in case they crack.
Some bendable concrete materials can also help with temperature control. As a result, these materials are durable and can significantly reduce repair costs.
Sustainable Materials’ Concrete Flex is a type of bendable concrete in the form of a panel. The Concrete Flex panels are resistant to fire, moisture, insects, microbes, and high impact.
The panels are ideal for exterior and interior wall finishing. They can also be applied to floors and are available in more than ten color options.
Bendable concrete has broad application potential in construction, including in precast concrete slabs. The problem is that these construction materials aren’t broadly available on the market yet.
Final Thoughts On Eco-Friendly Building Materials
There is plenty of choice of green building products these days, although not all will necessarily be available locally from your favorite builder’s merchant.
Shopping around for the best deals on the most environmentally friendly building products is worth doing.
Hopefully, the list in this article will point you in the right direction.
If you’d like to find out more about sustainable building materials, why not read our article “23 Sustainable Building Materials You Can Use Today?”
