When a business is starting out or is expanding to a new area, selecting and building a base of operations is especially important, particularly if your business is mindful of the environmental impact of its operations.
However, the most environmentally friendly building material you can choose, particularly for temporary buildings intending to serve as short-term bases of operations, is steel frame buildings.
The first and biggest reason for this is that steel is 100 per cent recyclable, and recycled steel saves significant amounts of energy, including 90 per cent fewer raw materials, 75 per cent less energy, 76 per cent less polluted water and 86 per cent less air pollution.
If your steel building is temporary, it can be melted down when it is no longer fit for purpose and turned into new steel ready to be used in another building.
Another environmental benefit is that metal is an ideal material for prefabrication, which ensures that no steel is wasted during the construction process.
Unlike concrete, which has a significant carbon cost not only in raw materials but during the mixing and preparation process, steel building components can be prefabricated and fitted on-site, leading to significantly less energy and fewer trips to and from the site.
None of this is new, of course, as metal recycling is the oldest and longest-lasting form of recycling, existing for almost as long as the use of metal tools has.
It has been known for thousands of years that metals can be melted down to make new tools and objects again and again, each time-saving energy and avoiding wasteful mining.
Very little of the steel we use will be virgin steel, such is the ubiquity of recycling, and so because of this, there is little that ends up wasted and rusting in landfills.
Best of all, if you want to keep your steel building, it will last for a very long time if well-maintained and even once it reaches the end of its operational life, it can still be melted down to make new steel.
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