The healthy life style is widely advertised all over the world.  Health is one of the most profitable investments nowadays because the number of ill people and nervous breakdowns is constantly rising.  We do our best to provide our families and relatives with good houses, education, food, beauty and health.  We work at all kinds of companies that produce or sell.  We live our lives taking care of our own future and forgetting about the rest of the world, polluting the Earth, air and water.  These are the results that lead to something contrary to the healthy life style.  What is there to be done?

The global ecosystem is not healthy as a result of people's activity.  The housing industry is one of the major contributors to the problem.  Every material used in a typical modern building is the product of energy-intensive processing.  The factories which make plywood and chipboard, the foundries which make steel, the plants which turn natural minerals into cement by subjecting them to enormous heat, all the technologies applied in the modern construction industry are exhausting for rivers, mountains and Earth as a whole.  This makes the struggle for health and healthy life style even harder and more expensive.  What are we to do to catch up with the "progress" and stop working really hard to earn our "healthy" leaving?  There is actually no answer, and this process creates a vicious circle without any possible exit from it.  But there is still something that can be done just to make the harm both to nature and ourselves not that great.  The solution is "natural building".

Natural building is not a new idea.  In many parts of the world, almost all buildings conform to these criteria.  On the contrary, our modern building industry with its harmful way of using nature resources, being toxic and hazardous both for our lives and the surroundings, deviates from ecological norms.  Let us consider some of natural building advantages over conventional modern building practices. What are the materials the construction companies use for building?  These are straw and other materials, and they are biological by-products which otherwise create a disposal problem. Enough straw, for instance, was wasted each year in California alone to build tens of thousands of family homes.  Until recently, nearly all the straw produced in California, for instance, was burned in the fields, but clean air legislation has outlawed that practice. When there was no chance anymore to burn straw in the fields, California rice growers started their struggle for legalizing straw-bale building.

We often hear stories of cancer and respiratory problems linked to formaldehyde-based glues, plastics, paints, asbestos, and fiberglass. The toxicity of these materials influences everyone associated with them. It may be you if you are working at a factory or if your job has to do with building.  If you live in a house made of poisonous end products you are also at risk. Natural materials like stone, wood, straw and earth, on the other hand, are not only non-toxic, they are life-enhancing.  Clay, one of the most useful natural building materials, is also valued for its ability to absorb toxins and restore health. Natural healing traditions rely on it heavily, for both internal and external applications. Building with natural, local materials also reduces our dependence on the polluting and energy-intensive manufacturing and transport industries.  So, buying a house or choosing the company to build it, get interested in what your house is made of and take a look at the appropriate certificates.

Modern building is an industry of significant investments. The rich and powerful are able to make their own homes and lives pleasant at the expense of those less privileged. Furthermore, the building industry's power is in the hands of the government and selected corporations who set the rules of using these or other materials. While population continues to grow the world is to invent alternative materials suitable for building and compatible with life. There are actually no standard designs for it. Everything depends on local ecology, geology and climate. To resume the said above we can say that the natural building is any building system which places the highest value on social and environmental sustainability. To build healthy homes for everyone we need to use simple techniques based on locally-available, renewable resources. These systems are based mostly on human labor and creativity.