We all know about saving energy and reducing waste in areas that are traditionally seen as representing Green issues. But it can be quite surprising to discover how such choices permeate many areas of modern life, but that we overlook simply because they don't fit in with stereotypical Green agendas.

Here's an example: garage doors.

And no, I'm not on crack, but I bet you are thinking WTF?!!?! What in the name of all that occasionally farts more than is strictly necessary have garage doors got to do with anything even the vaguest shade of green?

Well, two things actually: manufacture and disposal.

You see, garage doors come in all different styles but crucially a limited range of materials, namely metal, wood and synthetic, and to cut to the chase, only one of these can tick the eco-friendly box for both manufacturing and recycling.

Metal garage doors (usually steel or lightweight aluminium) are obviously made from sheets of metal, which requires mining ore from a quarry, transporting it to a smelting plant, pressing it flat and transporting the metal sheets to a factory to be fashioned into doors.

That's quite a lot of energy burned up in the process, not to mention the vast hole in the ground where the mining takes place. Though to be fair to metal, it can be recycled (i.e. melted down again) or in the case of steel left to eventually rust and crumble away.

Synthetic garage doors are usually constructed using moulded fibre-glass or vinyl, neither of which exist in nature and have to be created in factories (lots of energy again with the added bonus of nasty chemicals too). The end result will sort of degrade eventually, but only to a point where no-one would want to keep it as a door (ultra-violet light does for both these compound materials and renders them brittle and cracked). Once it's been tossed into your local landfill, fibre-glass and vinyl (a type of plastic) won't actually breakdown much further. Nice huh?

Which leaves us with wood, which conveniently grows on trees (alright, grows as trees) and requires no manufacturing as such - simple cut to shape - and can be easily recycled (there's always a market for waste wood to feed woodburners). Not only that, but as this wooden garage doors guide spells out, wood doors are so much nicer than the alternatives (and likely to increase the value of your property to boot).