There are many natural building techniques that limit the use of natural resources. These building techniques create very little waste and also can incorporate recycled materials.

The most popular and commonly known natural building techniques include:

• Strawbale: uses strawbales either with or without additional framing (non-load bearing vs load bearing). The outside of the strawbales can be coated with a stucco finish which can be made mostly from limestone instead of conventional cement stucco.
  
  
• Cob: uses a combination of clay, sand, straw and water to form a sculptural medium that is durable, energy efficient and highly creative although very labor intensive.
  
  
• SlipStraw: uses a combination of straw, clay, sand and water to create a mixture that is stuffed into a form that creates the shape of the building. When the mixture has cured (usually within 48-96 hours) the forms are removed and the shape is retained. By using different ratios of straw vs mud the walls can be made to have higher insulation values (more straw) or higher thermal mass (more mud).
  
  
• Rammed Earth: "In its simplest form it involves dumping moist soil mixed with a small portion of clay into forms. The mixture is then rammed or compacted, it solidifies and the forms are removed. Modern rammed-earth homes are created using a combination of dirt mixture, re-bar, and styrofoam. The dirt mixture consists of clay, sand, and small gravel and is supplemented with ten percent cement."
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rammed-earth_construction
  
  
• Adobe: similar to cob construction except that the clay, sand, straw and water mixture is packed into forms to make bricks that are 14 inches long, 10 inches wide, and 4 inches high. The bricks are stacked with a cob mixture between them creating a bond like cement in conventional brick building. The bricks when dry are often coated with a cob mixture for the finish. A good link for adobe is:
  http://www.homeownernet.com/articles/adobe.html
  
  
• Cordwood: "walls are constructed of short logs (log-ends) laid up widthwise in the wall within a special mortar matrix. The wall derives excellent insulation and thermal mass characteristics from insulation sandwiched between the inner and outer mortar joints."
  --quoted from http://www.cordwoodmasonry.com/Cordwood.html