The study of sustainable materials necessarily involves an extremely large set of scientific and economic criteria to reasonably establish a productive comparative analysis. While a number of systems have been proposed and developed, none has secured a clearly predominant position over all others. Therefore, it is necessary to glean from a great number of sources the necessary information and rating criteria to offer a current and productive assessment of the state of rating materials for their sustainable value. This proposal offers to study the available literature and tools for determining the sustainability of construction materials for the purpose of:
1. establishing the state of the art of ratings systems and their attendant criteria,
2. identifying the most recent and important innovations in sustainable material technologies, and identifying key areas for further research.