What is the Ontario Natural Building Coalition (ONBC)?

The ONBC is an advocacy group of designers, builders & homeowners working to promote healthy, high performance natural building strategies in the construction industry.

The Ontario Natural Building Coalition (ONBC) was formed to serve several purposes:

1. To provide information for people with an interest in building and/or owning a naturally built home. These services include general information, facilitating training courses, and providing testing data for building designers and building inspectors.
2. To initiate and support efforts to further the base of knowledge about natural building, including studies and tests leading to the building code acceptance of natural building techniques.
3. To foster a community of builders and owners involved in natural building to promote the exchange of ideas, resources, and social opportunities.

The Goals of the ONBC

The ONBC believes in the need for a movement towards a more environmentally responsible built environment. By using materials with the lowest possible embodied energy and toxicity and employing them in buildings designed to maximize the potential for renewable energies and minimizing the use of fossil fuels, we can make a substantial positive change in our impact on the environment. For the same costs as typical homes and buildings it is possible right now to create similar spaces from environmentally sound materials and to lower energy consumption dramatically. We hope to promote these strategies by assisting builders and owners to adopt them and to help to introduce them into the mainstream building world.