Comparison of Wood versus Stone versus Brick

Can anyone point me to a study that compares wood versus stone versus brick holistically and includes an analysis of the 100 year loss of a tree's energy absorbing ability while a new one is grown, compared life-cycle for life-cycle with the cost and value of the other materials, adjusted for embodied energy?  Also, this should be not just life cycle costing but be a life cycle valuation.  It should use a term and reversion model for assessing these: the traditional view is that you get more value from marble than wood, so is this being taken into account in a holistic comparison of not only the costs, but the revenues, adjusted for differing life cycles?

Reply:

I can't speak to the community side of this question, but in terms of the environmental impacts of products, have you looked at any of the following?

-BEES (Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability)software: this was developed by the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Building and Fire Research Laboratory with support from the U.S. EPA Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Program, and it includes actual environmental and economic performance data for nearly 200 building products. http://www.bfrl.nist.gov/oae/software/bees.html

-Sustainable Products Corporation: http://www.sustainableproducts.com/susproddef.html Their list of product certification systems (including the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (2000) Social Equity Performance as well as many others) speak to many of the issues you raise.

-GB Tool: this software was developed as part of Green Building Challenge (an international organisation aiming to establish a common language for describing "green buildings"). The software tool is supported by the International Initiative for Sustainable Built Environments (iiSBE), and the tool is the basis for the Green Building Challenge. The scheme is still officially in alpha testing. http://www.iisbe.org/ http://greenbuilding.ca/down/database/SBIS-Aug02.zip