Towards a unified set of sustainable building materials criteria

Building materials have a significant impact in achieving more sustainable buildings. At the same time, the huge rates of raw materials consumption and production happened recently made it inevitable to proper select sustainable materials in order to incorporate sustainability principles and criteria in building projects. In this paper, a holistic set of these criteria is developed considering all environmental, economic and social sustainability principles by reviewing state of the art studies concerned with highlighting criteria affecting selecting sustainable building materials. Although there are many organizations considered with the study of sustainable buildings such as LEED, BREEAM and Green Globes, still there is no agreement on categories, number and definitions of criteria affecting selecting sustainable building materials. The significance of this study will help the building industry adopt a unified set of sustainable building material criteria. In addition, it will aid architects and engineers better select more sustainable building materials.