Promotion of materials and products with sustainable credentials

The use of materials and products with sustainable credentials could potentially improve resource productivity and aid sustainable development. In order for such items to be widely adopted, the construction industry would need to overcome the barriers common to specification practice. The conservative nature of specifiers has been described by previous research, whereby familiar items are recurrently selected from a trusted palette and alternative solutions are only sought when the palette fails. The body of literature recognizes manufacturers as influential sources of information and has also shown that specifiers often make informal contact with companies known to them when faced with a specification problem. However, some existing work indicates that the active selection phase is not the only time when the decisions of specifiers can be influenced. Promotional material encountered during a state of passive awareness could be retained for later use, thereby expanding the specifiers' palette. This paper reports and discusses the results of a quantitative inquiry into the extent of publicity currently afforded to materials and products with sustainable credentials in mainstream construction industry periodicals. The findings reveal that problems in the marketing of these items may be acting as a barrier to their uptake by restricting the specifiers' awareness of the available options.