Green Building Supplies
When you are looking for places that supply green building materials, you need not look further than you might anticipate. There are some mainstream specialty companies, such as paint companies, that will offer green alternatives. But there are also more and more stores popping up that are green building specialty stores that carry nothing but the 'good stuff.' At these stores, you can either purchase off the shelf, or order most of your building supplies, especially those that are needed for the interior of your structures. These include carpet, paint, varnishes, flooring options, cabinet options, environmentally friendly cleaning supplies, and even energy systems including heating and cooling as well as water systems. These places are great resources to not only purchase materials, but to ask for advise on your building project, product comparison etc.
Once you have all of your lists made for your building materials, I recommend you try to see which of those can be possibly purchased through recycled sources. I have written several blog posts on recycled materials, and reference it quite often because there are so many ways that it can help the environment and your pocket book. Each time a material needs to be made, whether it is environmentally friendly or not, you still are paying for the cost to produce the goods. Well, there might very well be those products already in existence looking for another home!
The cost of NOT building green
If you do not already know the news, building green is not more expensive than conventional building. If by chance it ends up to be, it is on average less than 1% more! After the actual building costs are out of the way, what is the maintaining cost difference? More than you might think! Green buildings on average are between 40-60% less expensive to upkeep with energy costs. That cost is only going to make more and more of a difference as the cost of the conventional energy methods becomes more expensive. Also, it is important to realize that the cost of green energy is not going to proportionately get more expensive with conventional methods. This is due to the fact that the cost of equipment to collect is the initial cost (and often times the largest) and the energy sources are renewable.