Articles on some of the different facets of making a sustainable building
Straw EPD - quantifying the environmental impacts of straw production
In October last year an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) was published for Straw as Insulation Material in the UK. This was the culmination of months of research and discussions, funded and led by The School of Natural Building and the European Interreg-funded project Up Straw project.
Life Cycle Assessment, Part 2: example carbon assessment for a Passivhaus building.
This post follows directly from the last two, which looked at ways to compare the embodied carbon of different materials. This post puts that into practice with an example using life cycle assessment to compare the differing carbon impacts of different options for a passivhaus design.
Embodied Carbon - what is it and how to compare materials? Sustainable building materials, Part 4
Sustainable building must mean producing as little CO₂ as possible. That means low or zero carbon emissions from both construction and use of a building. Choices of material can have a huge impact on this.