As an Architect it is our imperative to design buildings around standard material sizes to reduce wastage on site but to what extent is one material more sustainable than another and how can we design and build ecological housing in Victoria? New homes in Victoria are constructed from a typical palette of building materials, where suitable alternative sustainable building materials are often overlooked due to cost or unfamiliarity. Architect Tone Wheeler in Clarke (2015) simp

In the pursuit of being more sustainable in our everyday lives, one question remains – to build new or buy an existing home? The answer is not so straightforward. The key ingredients to sustainable building are to reduce, re-use and use more sustainable products. Therefore, to buy a home is a sustainable action ‘to re-use’ - as you are making an existing home yours and ‘to reduce’ - subsequently preserving these materials from landfill and preventing the consumption of new m