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How to Choose an Environmentally Friendly Garage Door

Admin • Jul 21, 2020

Beautiful Modern House — Glendale, AZ — Guaranteed Door Service

If you have an aging and/or badly damaged garage door on your property and you are looking for a suitable replacement, you have a wide variety of doors and door types to choose from. However, while most sensible homeowners look for replacement garage doors that are secure, durable, and attractive, fewer stop to consider whether their new garage door is environmentally friendly.

If you are an environmentally conscious homeowner, and you want to ensure that your garage door is as green as possible, you have a wide variety of excellent garage door models to choose from.

To be truly environmentally friendly, a replacement garage door must meet three important criteria: it must be made from sustainable materials, it must be durable and long-lasting (to avoid the need for further replacement doors), and it must be easy to recycle.

Which Garage Door Materials Are Sustainable?

You might immediately assume that organic timber doors are a safe bet. Unfortunately, many timber garage doors are made using timber taken from unsustainable sources, such as old-growth trees in rainforests.

This doesn't rule out timber garage doors entirely, and timber garage doors that take their materials from sustainable sources are much more eco-friendly. Timber plantations that are approved by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) are an ideal source. If you do choose a timber garage door, make sure that you can easily and accurately trace the origins of the wood used to create it.

Metal garage doors are also surprisingly eco-friendly. While they are made from inorganic materials and require a lot of energy to manufacture, most modern metal garage doors are made, at least in part, from recycled metals. Some steel garage doors are made from over 50% recycled steel and are just as strong, durable, and secure as virgin steel doors.

Unfortunately, garage doors made of fiberglass or vinyl plastic are inherently unfriendly to the environment. They contain non-biodegradable plastics made from petroleum products and take a lot of energy to produce. You should avoid these materials.

Which Garage Doors Are Most Durable?

A well-made, well-installed wood garage door can be tremendously durable and will last for decades if properly maintained. However, maintaining a wooden garage door is not a trivial matter; most wood doors must be resealed at least twice a year to prevent the spread of mold and rot, and you may also have to use chemical treatments to protect against termites.

Well-made metal garage doors can also be supremely durable and are usually much easier to maintain. Aluminum garage doors, while not as physically strong as steel doors, are immune to rust and corrosion. With occasional cleaning and mechanical maintenance, an aluminum garage door can last indefinitely.

Steel garage doors can be just as long-lived. However, to prevent rust, steel garage doors are pre-coated with a durable layer of paint or powder coating, which prevents any moisture from reaching the vulnerable steel. These coatings are durable but will need to be professionally renewed every few years, a process that uses a lot of energy and may involve toxic chemicals.

Which Garage Doors Are Easy to Recycle?

Wooden garage doors can usually be recycled, although the process is not as easy as you might think. Some wood doors are treated with inorganic chemicals that make the wood difficult to pulp and reuse — however, these treated timbers can often be repurposed in their original state.

Steel and aluminum garage doors are easily recycled at almost any metal recycling facility, even if they are rusty or badly damaged. Since steel and aluminum can be melted down and reused many times, doors made from recycled metals are just as easy to recycle.

Hopefully, this guide will help you pick out an eco-friendly replacement garage door quickly and easily. If you have any more questions about garage door replacement, contact the experts at Guaranteed Door Service, Inc.

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