impacts on manufacturing, extractive and disposal industryand it also requires basic changes in the goals and driving forces of the economy. I am particularly interested in the implications of such change for community economic development. Like my earlier book, this dissertation is about potentials: the most appropriate way of doing things, given our level of development. But as in my earlier book, I want to explore this by highlighting the practical initiatives already taking place that are contributions to this new level of production and consumption. I want to strike a balance between theory and practice, large vision and practical methods. In that book I looked at the underlying principles and ultimate potentials of green development, and argued that they constitute a new and holistic paradigm of post-materialist economic development. In this work I want to demonstrate this even more graphically and specifically, as it applies to building materials. In this sense, this is a work of theory in green political-economy. While contributions to the new paradigm are multiplying by leaps and bounds every year, so far as I know this is the first general synthesis of this sort applied to building materialscovering production, consumption and regulation. While my emphasis on principles and potentials makes this is a work of theory, it is also intended as a work of policy or economic strategy. By highlighting best practices in key areas, I want to make it useful for builders, developers, tradespeople, designers, planners, policy-makers, community economic developers, environmentalists, ethical investors and others. I want to suggest ways by which communities can (or are already beginning to) spawn green industry, turn waste into wealth, generate healthy work, create markets for eco-products, and simultaneously move to preserve or regenerate their natural environments.