Sustainable construction is all about thinking of Mother Earth’s well-being in addition to your own. More often than not, the two are in harmony. But on occasion, you will have to sacrifice money, time or convenience to build sustainably. A straw bale home, for example, requires a commitment to maintenance for the life of the house (if you build well, that means at least two human lifetimes, so take your vitamins). In addition, you don’t want to be moving paintings or mirrors around because you’ll have to put a new hole in the plaster. And forget about remodeling ... wait a minute, maybe that’s an advantage.

Natural building is often in sync with sustainability, but not always. For example, a good sustainable choice in roof framing is using engineered I-joists made from flake-board. At present, the glue they use to make this stuff is really gross, with formaldehyde and other nasties. But the alternative is using lots of natural lumber that has to come from big trees and therefore, old forests. Particle and flake board, and for that matter, wood used in laminated veneer lumber (LVL), can be made from fast-growing, farmable trees.

So what about the toxins present in manufactured lumber? Our solution was to build slowly. By the time we had the roof members sheathed on both sides, outgassing was likely 99.5 percent complete. Many people look to natural alternatives when it comes to home building because they’ve had allergic or even life-threatening reactions to the chemicals coming out of manufactured products. But for those of us who don’t have environmental allergies, I think we can make a few choices in reverence for Gaia, our mother. Sometimes, that means making man-made choices.

My favorite building materials and methods are those that fit the criteria for both sustainability and natural-ness. That’s why I love clay plaster. You can use the earth right from your house site to make the siding for your home and the surface for your floors. You can gather the loose straw from your wall-building, chop it up, and mix it with your clay to make a product with amazing shear strength.

Next on the list of my favorite construction words is “recycled”. Recycled often means man-made, but it also means inexpensive. Sucker rods from the local natural gas well industry were used in the straw bale wall system of our house to make it a load-bearing/post and beam hybrid. Aluminum cans were incorporated into our dining room wall. Maple flooring salvaged from a warehouse provided a lovely second-story hardwood floor that we couldn’t have afforded otherwise. Rolled glass from our recycling center was used in place of sand for concrete and plaster needs.

Finally, think “local” as a way to build sustainably. Shipping and freight, especially these days, adds an embodied energy footprint to everything you buy. If there is a local sawmill, a nearby farm for straw, a local stone quarry -- use their services even to the point of tailoring your home design to incorporate local resources. Just as it struck Nebraskans as silly to haul timber across the prairie to build their homes after some clever dude invented the baling machine, it might be silly to insist on oak flooring when you’ve got a guy down the road who mills wonderful knotty pine tongue and groove.

Now, there are sure to be arguments for and against any decision you make regarding sustainable building practices. Sometimes, the jury is still out on a particular idea. But the point is, if you go into the building process with awareness, you’re likely to average on the side of Earth Mother protection. And the owner/builders walking in your footsteps will have the benefits of your trailblazing efforts.