Lowering Environmental Footprint by Using Recyclable Resources in Residential Architecture

As 40% of global CO2 emissions and waste and 40% to 50% of natural resource usage come from the built environment, more urgently than ever, it is imperative that architectural design and construction practices be crafted with current environmental needs in mind. Commonly available sustainable building materials were assessed using a conceptual or decision-oriented assessment framework informed by life-cycle principles and illustrated through the Green Grow Home case study. In terms of embodied carbon, recyclability, resource efficiency, environmental impact, and durability, insulated concrete forms (ICFs), structural insulated panels (SIPs), engineered wood products (EWPs), recycled concrete aggregate (RCA), and cellulose insulation were compared. The data used in the literature-based assessment are drawn from different studies with potentially varying system boundaries. Therefore, the reported values are used as indicative evidence rather than as a normalized comparative life-cycle assessment (LCA). Within the respective literature sources, cellulose insulation and RCA are reported with embodied carbon values of 1.1 and 2.55 kgCO2e/m2. The key advantage of EWPs is that they provide a compromise between relatively low embodied carbon, durability and circular economy benefits, while SIPs and ICFs mainly help to improve operational energy performance. These principles applied to the Green Grow Home further illustrate how material substitution and selection based on life cycle can greatly minimize environmental impacts. The switch from plywood to strand board decreased the embodied energy by 59%, and total material changes were estimated to save around 39,010 MJ of energy. The paper concludes that a transition to sustainable construction materials in residential architecture is a necessary change that will lower carbon footprints and energy consumption of buildings.