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The building industry has depended heavily on energy-intensive materials and resources. Building materials contribute to large environmental costs. These costs are incurred in extracting, producing, manufacturing, transporting, installing and recycling these materials. A sustainably managed building material is that which has the minimum possible environmental cost. An overall evaluation of the total energy and environmental impact of the material and its creation process, as well as the long-term efficiency of the material (maintenance and replacement costs) is needed to determine the sustainability of a material. Materials that are more sustainable generally have a lower initial and lifetime environmental impact. A material can be made more sustainable in various ways, including reducing the travel time of transport, reusing materials, selecting materials that have a manufacturing process with a low energy requirement, using recyclable products and so on. Some sustainably managed materials are fly-ash based bricks and blocks, lumber from sustainable forests, etc.
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