The Purpose of This Study Materials are the stuff of economic life in our industrial world. They include the resource inputs and the product outputs of industrial production. How we handle them is a major determinant of true economic efficiency, real prosperity, social justice, our personal health, and the health of the natural environment. Materials are, moreover, far more than resources or products. They are gifts of nature, and substances of Gaias Body. How we relate to materialsin their production and their consumptionis one of the best barometers of our fundamental relationship to that which gives us life. Not coincidentally, it reflects our relationship to ourselves, our creativity, our work and possibilities for self-actualization and community developmenta theme I will emphasize throughout this thesis. This dissertation is about building materials: about how we use them now, how they might be used more appropriately, and the process of getting from here to there. Our current use of materials is running down natural systems, destroying community, debasing work, and suppressing all kinds of possibilities for real development. To remedy this, we need to conserve materials, reduce their unnecessary use, produce them more benignly, make them last longer, and recycle and reuse them. We also need to develop community consumer initiatives and regulatory processes to support these reforms. Therefore I have organized this work in chapters to separately deal with