What are Sustainable Building Materials?

From what I see and know, the construction industry must be relying heavily on energy-intensive materials and resources. I can't imagine how large environmental costs must be involved in building every single building and skyscraper.
By costs I mean the ones involved in extracting, producing, manufacturing, transporting, installing and recycling these materials.

There must be some overall evaluation of the total energy, environmental impact and long-term efficiency of the material and its creation process.
What are the most used and also less-knows sustainably managed materials?