Popular, traditional building materials typically exhibit a high energy intensity and a detrimental effect on the environment. Only a negligible part of them are recovered and recycled, re-used in the building trade or other branches of industry. However, the technology of building detached houses based on ceramic blocks is still most often favored by investors due to its price and high availability (in terms of materials and workmanship). The research indicates that 25–30% of CO2 emissions generated by buildings originate from materials and their manufacturing process. In contrast, 70–75% can be attributed to the use of buildings over a longer period of time. As a result, the importance of alternative materials with minimal environmental impacts is growing year by year. Eco-friendly housing, using natural products, pollutes the environment less significantly compared to conventional construction. Its key element is the use of materials characterized by the lowest possible degree of processing, and thus by the lowest possible embodied energy. A type of material that perfectly fits into the above assumptions is straw bale. The purpose of the article focus on, four variants of a construction of detached house have been compared by means of the LCA method. Variant I – the reference one, presents the technology utilizing ceramic hollow bricks, variants II, III and IV are eco-friendly technologies employing wood and straw. The study presents the amount of energy required for construction and carbon footprint that remains in the environment following the construction of the buildings.

Occurrences associated with the phenomena of climate change are increasingly visible. Effects of progressive environmental pollution are monitored with growing concern. Still, in the construction sector, the choice of sustainable materials and the knowledge concerning them is insignificant. Studies have shown that single-family residential buildings form the largest share of new buildings in Central European countries. It should be assumed that it is the improvement of this particular section of the construction sector to be the goal of further development of societies. This paper presents a case study of the construction of a house using straw - a material that, on the one hand, is a product associated with local tradition, while significantly reducing carbon footprint of its production and use, on the other. The construction of a prototypical house with the application of composite technology, i.e. timber framing with straw bale infill, was compared with a conventional method (ceramic masonry units) which is currently the most popular choice for building single-family houses in Poland. The study is based on the building’s life cycle assessment (LCA) over its consecutive phases as a tested and reliable method of the verification of a material’s impact on the environment.