Efficient well designed small homes. They use less material and should use little energy to run them.

However it really comes down to how you do things on a daily basis not on the materials or products chosen.

It is interesting to see this poll and I personally believe in sustainability. We can use sustainably sourced timber, stone and concrete and claim to be environment friendly; however, when governments have approved use of Foam in the building foundation/slab and probably one day earth will be covered in Foam, how sustainable and environment friendly is that? Owners have little choice in most of the cases.

Sustainable design should be the norm - not 'alternative' . Using simple design principles, and careful use of materials, should make your home, less expensive to build, less expensive to run and more comfortable to live in - what's not to like about that ?

Teach your children the preferred way to go by NOT buying plastic toys and they will learn to chose world friendly materials throughout their lives

This is an important subject, and many good points have already been made, but as MB Design brought out the products chosen are only a small part of the picture.

As has often been said, if you want to buy a truly environmentally friendly chair/car/jacket/toy, buy it second-hand and use it absolutely to death (and rinse and repeat). Getting rid of an old petrol-powered car in order to buy a new electric vehicle, for instance, makes little sense when a new electric car will almost certainly have cost more energy to make than the old one will consume for the rest of its natural life. Demand usually drives supply - so demanding less will usually mean less is produced.

The last group to live close to truly ‘sustainable’ lives in the Western world was probably the working class families from pre-WWII — and few today would really trade places with them. After all, it was they who grasped these new inventions with both hands, as new technology promised the way to a better life. (Sound familiar?)

Almost all synthetic materials we dislike now were first designed to solve a problem - minimising shipping costs or food waste; satisfying demand for natural substances (synthetic rubber, polyester and food additives, for instance) and so on. Likewise, the current plague of cookie-cutter suburbs and soulless apartment blocks across the world originated in the idealistic vision of architects trying to solve post-war reconstruction issues and to build communities. Somewhat ironic now.

Natural materials, these days, are a lot like bespoke design work: once common by default, they are now often beyond the reach of many families who lack the money or time to invest in them.

Simply put, sustainability cannot be reduced to the kind of products consumed: how we consume them is just as important. It’s hard to claim a ‘sustainable’ choice when we buy a new marble benchtop just to update the old Formica one - but most of us would if we could. And even when a new purchase is necessary, the synthetic, unsustainably produced version is almost always the cheapest by far.

Just some thoughts to ponder :-)

Agree with comments above...

It is indeed how we use things and how easily we are conned into thinking that today's new thing is better than the one we already have.

The most sustainable thing is the one you already have - use it well, learn to repair everything or re-purpose and then break it apart and make sure each part is correctly recycled (there are mare and more avenues for this).

We are deeply trained by every bit of marketing we see that saving 3 cents counts - and we apply that feeling that now rests in our bodies to everything - I see it in myself and hate it - and find it takes all my power to choose the better quality one and spend a few dollars more.

We are also tuned to the the ridiculousness of constant economic growth - it drives our constant 'need to spend' (we are told to spend) and need to make ever more money to buy 'today's comfort'.

>> Not many people realise that a 3% growth per annum - which sounds so little - requires a doubling of input in 20 years time - our planet is ALREADY at capacity it cannot take a doubling of demand! (I did the maths in an artwork and it was horrifying to see it visually described). And yet we forget that the very things we need to survive are destroyed as we race for this growth -- clean air, clean water, clean food...

As humans it is our job to be custodians of this planet - we are the only species who can alter the trajectory we are currently on and make our planet viable for all species who share this place amazing with us.

Can we prevent our ‘need’ for things to service our lives from overtaking our sense of responsibility to ‘everything’?

>>I live with wild wombats and right now the grass is dry (due to drought) and the wombats are digging up the roots of the grass and creating lifeless dust-bowls - in their desperate 'need' for food they are destroying the very environment that will provide them food in the future - I see this behaviour reflected in humans (including myself) - it is embedded in our genes as a drive to survive ... it is just that we have blown out what what we think we need to survive to crazy proportions - can we reel it back in?

As an architect, I have previously been taught that creating a sustainable home is about designing it so that living in it lowers energy and water use. This is achieved through designing for orientation, using thermal mass and specifying fixtures and finishes that are low impact, reuse water on site, etc.

However, the latest research is showing that this is not enough to impact the rate of climate change. And that what we build from needs to be considered in order to make a dent. This is because the timeframe required to see the benefits of sustainable living in a home, is a longer play than the upfront construction from low tox, low energy, minimal footprint materials and methodologies.

It has to be a two-pronged approach. Choose materials and products, and constructing efficiently with low energy and low waste. Having carbon neutral homes. And designing homes that over the long term, are low in energy and water consumption, and support the health and well-being of the occupants.

A project was established in mid 2017, called “The Building Code Energy Performance Trajectory Project”. It involved the Sustainable Built Environment Council and ClimateWorks Australia, and is described as an industry-led initiative seeking improvements to energy requirements in the National Construction Code.

The report was released recently, and what was amazing in this report was to read that 58% of Australia’s buildings in 2050, will be built after 2019 … which means that there’s huge potential to impact their performance and the environment through better energy requirements. And these energy requirements have not been rigorously updated since 2010, despite electricity prices having doubled over that time. Detached housing will comprise 64% of the new construction between 2019 and 2050. So every homeowner has the opportunity to seriously change the landscape of energy use and efficiency in our country.

There’s some sectors of the industry really pushing back against this … largely because they believe it will dramatically dent their profit margins to have to build houses with higher star ratings. Australian homes, on average, perform very poorly, and our expectations are super low.

Steve Baczek, an American architect, said something about American houses that I think sums it up for Australia as well ...

“It’s not that High-Performance Houses cost too much; it’s that our idea of a fairly priced home is based on a history of building houses to meet embarrassingly low performance benchmarks. Clients don’t realise the difference between built to code vs built to last”.

Our planet has limited resources and an explosion of people. It is up to people who can afford to make a difference to do so. There is so much waste in the building industry it is alarming and disposal of waste products is a massive problem for future generations!

Kay Shields, yes there is too much waste in the building industry. We talk of sustainability but forget about the health of a building and off course the occupants. We speak of using sustainably sourced timber, concrete etc…then what do we do with it? Coat it in a synthetic crude oil-based plastic! Not only is it detrimental to the timber itself and the indoor air quality but what happens at the end of its life cycle? When a chair, floor, wall is treated with a natural material, one uses renewables and not crude oil…and importantly, it doesn’t get chucked out or goes to land fill when it has served its purposes. A sustainable home can be a health home as well by using natural materials and coatings throughout.

as Undercover Architect wonderfully quoted "........Clients don’t realise the difference between built to code vs built to last”.................On many levels so so true...............It's about the longterm cost of building, and so often people pursue what they mistakenly consider to be "cost effective", but in relation to the principles of "sustainability", are in fact horrendously expensive, in both terms of the dollar value and the actual cost to the planet and future generations. Most of this industry unfortunately has no idea about what sustainability really means and how to truly pursue it. It would involve widespread implementation across so many levels of planning and construction regulation to do properly (dream on), starting with imposing proper subdivision restrictions, that protects our natural environment from residential "sustainability's" greatest enemy, which is the explosion of expanding suburban sprawl, that feeds the parasitic "packet mix housing" volume building industry.

Loving this post & the comments. As builders (see www.carltalbot.com.au to see our sustainable house in The Cape eco village) we continue to learn & tweak what we do, use & how we do it.

This is a dream when it can become very costly you’ll think twice

There is no climate emergency .

Angela "Coat it in a synthetic crude oil-based plastic! Not only is it detrimental to the timber itself and the indoor air quality but what happens at the end of its life cycle? "

I've been wanting to add more storage for some time but I have been wrestling with that dilemma. In the past we have supported local businesses and bought solid timber furniture but the finish takes an inconveniently long time to air out. I came across a furniture manufacturer, I think on this site, who offers a water-based finish, but enquiries as to whether local businesses could do that have been met with puzzled stares. E0 laminates are now available so perhaps I should get something built in. I go back and forth on which would be the better choice.