Steel Buildings Are the Green Choice

When you think of environmentally friendly buildings, chances are that your first thought is not of steel buildings. In fact, though, metal buildings, and in particular steel buildings, are more environmentally friendly than most other types of construction. Here’s why a steel building is your best option if you want to build earth friendly garages, barns, storage buildings or building additions.

 Steel Is Recyclable

Not only is steel recyclable, but most of today’s small steel buildings are made with recycled steel. That means that when you choose a metal building, you’re re-using something that’s already been used, keeping it out of the waste stream and reducing the strain on the planet. At the same time, by NOT choosing wood, you’re reducing the demand for earth resources that only renew themselves slowly and reducing the number of trees removed from the important job of cleaning the atmosphere of carbon.

Transporting Your Materials Uses Fewer Resources

When you build a traditional building, the materials you need will be delivered to many different points (the store, the lumber yard, your building site, etc.) requiring lots of gas and energy use. Steel buildings, on the other hand, are delivered all at once on one or two trucks, using far less energy and gas in transportation.

Steel Buildings Are Energy Efficient

Today’s steel buildings are built to be energy efficient. They use the latest technologies to reduce heat transfer and energy use. Since you use less energy to heat your new building, you use less non-renewable resources. In addition, steel buildings are the ideal shell for energy-efficient building and modifications. You can reduce energy use even further by choosing such systems as high-efficiency roofs, high quality insulation and solar roofing or skylights for natural light use.

Metal Buildings Require Very Little Maintenance

One additional way that metal buildings are earth-friendly is in their maintenance needs. Steel buildings generally are powder-coated with a protective, colored coating that will last for decades. That reduces the need for scraping off old paint and repainting, reducing more hazardous chemicals into the air.

Not the Scrap Heap!

When you no longer need your steel building, you don’t have to demolish it. In fact, many owners of small metal buildings, such as garages, storage sheds and home workshops, simply dismantle the structure and sell it to another user who can erect it on his own property. When the building reaches the end of its useful life, most of the components can be recycled and reused. The typical steel building takes up about one-tenth the square footage in a landfill as the typical wood-frame building of the same size.

If saving the environment is important to you, then steel buildings are a natural choice for your storage needs.