(click photos for larger versions)

But this year, I was also looking forward to some vacation time following the conference. Jerelyn and I took five days' of vacation after Greenbuild to explore southern Arizona and celebrate our 25th anniversary. As day transitions to night on the flight back east, I reflect on that time.

On Saturday morning, we traveled southeast from Phoenix, past Tucson, to the Hacienda Corona do Guevavi bed & breakfast in Nogales, Arizona, just a stone's throw from the Mexican border. The region is rich with wildlife and draws thousands of birders and others from throughout the world each year. Along with hundreds of bird species in the canyon oases sprinkled throughout Cochise Country (we saw about 60 species in our travels) are such exotic mammals as coati, ringtail, antelope jackrabbit, collared peccary (javalina), cougar (mountain lion), bobcat, and maybe (at least before the border fence) the rare cats ocelot and jaguar. Other than the antelope jackrabbit, we didn't see any others of those mammals, but it was great imagining them watching us from hidden spots rock ledges during our daily hikes.

On all of these hikes, at least when I wasn't trying to identify another new bird species, I spent time thinking about — and discussing with Jerelyn — the water crisis facing this region.

Read more...

Two guys were walking down the hall. Professional-looking guys, architectorial. One of them said to the other, "It's called, um, energy... recovery ventilator."

BAM! That's what it's about. Yeah, there's greenwash, there's cynicism, there's impatience. But there's also people finding their way forward. We're all spread out along the learning curve, and that's something I have a difficult time keeping in mind. It's easy to feel like everything's too-little-too-late, and hard for me to give credit for good intentions where it's due.

And with that, I'm going to break with the blogging. I have an early flight, and am going to get ready for that. Perish the thought, I'm even going to skip our after-party. (Hey, it's my birthday — I'll do what I want.)

I may follow up with more yet today, depending on how tired I am after I get packed up and ready to flee. But most likely, the deluge will abate...

It was formulated specifically for bamboo, Smith told me, and they expect to have a complete conversion of their plywood and flooring by the first quarter of 2010 — no more MDI (their current zero-VOC offering — which is zero-VOC for the consumer, but not for the fabricating workers), and no more PF. Both of those adhesives will be discontinued in favor of the new SoyBond.

It's a move up in pretty much every way, he said: Better for the makers, the users, and the environment. "At the end of the lifecycle, having an organic based adhesive that will break down better than other current alternatives is a step forward all by itself — but it also really responds to the challenge of working in China." (See Bamboo in Construction: Is the Grass Always Greener?)

Their non-emitting MDI line carried a bit of a price premium over the low-emitting PF line; now, all product will be non-emitting. It seems that the price difference that existed between the two lines will about average out — it will all be the most righteous glued-bamboo stuff available, and will cost less than the previous most righteous glued-bamboo stuff available due to manufacturing economics. It's easier to make more of one line than less of two, even if there's no cost savings on the resin.

Testing to verify compliance with California 1350 begins next week.

As you'll recall, these are also the folks who offered the first FSC certified bamboo products.

I normally post the Top-10 green building products list just as Alex is starting the presentation. And this year, I just totally spaced it out.

BuildingGreen Announces 2009 Top-10 Green Building Products

Phoenix, AZ, November 12, 2009 — BuildingGreen, LLC, publisher of the GreenSpec Directory and Environmental Building News, today announced the 2009 Top-10 Green Building Products. This eighth annual award, announced at the U.S. Green Building Council's Greenbuild Conference, recognizes the most exciting products drawn from recent additions to the GreenSpec directory and coverage in Environmental Building News.

"Our selections of the Top-10 Green Building Products represent a wide range of product types in many different application areas," noted BuildingGreen founder and executive editor Alex Wilson. This year's list is particularly diverse, ranging from a recycled-content concrete block, to a flywheel energy storage system for data centers, a mobile solar generator for job-site power, and an advanced modular classroom for schools.

Energy-saving products among the Top-10 include a line of mineral wool insulation, an integrated rain-screen / insulation wall cladding for commercial buildings, a heat-pump water heater, and an energy control system for lighting in commercial buildings. A structural matrix system, Silva Cell, provides a support system for urban tree roots, helping trees survive in largely impervious environments and helping to manage stormwater runoff.

One of the nation's most innovative furniture makers, Baltix, is being recognized for new products that incorporate a variety of biobased, FSC-certified, and recycled-content materials. "Many of the Top-10 products this year have multiple environmental attributes," said Wilson.

BuildingGreen's Top-10 product selections, as in previous years, are drawn from new additions to the company's GreenSpec product directory. About 200 product listings have been added to the GreenSpec database during the past year. "New products are being introduced all the time, making it a challenge for our staff to keep up," said Wilson. [No kidding — Mark] "We also continue to come across products that have been on the market for years, but were under our radar screen." The GreenSpec database includes more than 2,100 product listings.

A major driver of the development of green products continues to be the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Rating System (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which awards points for the use of certain product types, such as certified wood, or for the energy savings that green products can achieve. "Designers of LEED buildings are looking for green products, and manufacturers are responding," said Wilson. In the online version of GreenSpec, users can find products organized by LEED credits as well as by building category and the CSI MasterFormat structure.

The 2009 Top-10 Green Building Products are listed below. Complete descriptions and contact information are provided on BuildingGreen.com:

• Pozzotive Plus CMUs and Concrete Brick from Kingston Block
• Thermafiber Mineral Wool Insulation Products
• Invelope Integrated Wall Insulation and Rainscreen System
• Baltix Recycled- and Biobased-Content Office Furniture
• Project FROG Modular Green Classroom
• Rheem HP-50 Heat-Pump Water Heater
• Convia Energy-Management Infrastructure
• Pentadyne GTX Flywheel Energy Storage
• Silva Cell Subsurface Tree Protection and Stormwater System
• Mobile Solar Power Generator

Our booth is all about LEEDuser.com this year, fresh from its full launch. Throughout the Expo we've had guest experts from the LEEDuser team in to discuss specific LEED points. I've been tasked with videotaping those smart people talking about this fascinating stuff — fascinating for anybody who happens to be bent that way, not just LEEDies. The schedule has included:

• Josh Radoff of YRG Sustainability on NC SSc8: Light Pollution Reduction
  
  
• Penny Bonda on CI MRc3: Materials Reuse
  
  
• Erik Dyrr of KEMA Services on CS EAc1: Optimize Energy Performance
  
  
• Carli Bullock Jones on CI IEQc8.1: Daylight and Views — Daylight
  
  
• Lauren Yarmuth of YRG Sustainability on NC WEc2: Innovative Wastewater Technologies
  
  
• Chris Lander of Veridian on NC WEc2: Enhanced Commissioning
  
  
• Jenny Carney of YRG Sustainability on EBOM WEp1: Minimum Indoor Plumbing Fixture and Fitting Efficiency
  
  
• Nadav Malin of BuildingGreen – LEEDuser on NC MRc5: Regional Materials
  
  
• Valerie Walsh of LEED Management Services on NC MRc2: Construction Waste Management

The idea is that parts or all of this footage will end up on LEEDuser.

Even though I haven't been getting around the floor all that much this year, I suspect the post-show repercussions will be more intense than usual. Jane Kolleeny, the tireless Managing Editor of GreenSource, has been doing an amazing job of handing out my cards at booths with potential GreenSource products as she makes her rounds. Never has my contact information been distributed with such frequency and intensity. Go Jane go! Where does she get the energy? (Where will I?)

I don't have attendance figures for the conference; I've heard guesses of 30,000 or more. I asked a cop directing traffic last night if he'd heard anything; "No," he said, "but it's a lot."

The opening remarks by Rick Fedrizzi were the usual fare — we're fantastic, we're visionaries, we're saving the world.

Watching the plenary in Cosentino's box

A really nice touch, I thought, is that they had the leaders of green building movements from around the world also making statements. This is a global thing, it has to be.

Video is going to be available at the Greenbuild website (and presumably at greenbuild365.org as well). Since none of it was earth-shattering, I'm not going to get into who said what; check it out in a few days at one or the other of those websites. It was about as reported in the Arizona Republic.

I watched the opening statements and the plenary from Cosentino's box, up on the third tier and a little behind the stage. The audio in the stadium back there was unintelligible, so everyone trouped into the box to watch it on closed-circuit TV.

After the plenary, I went down to field level; ran into some people I work with, some people I don't. The thing I like best about Greenbuild is the opportunity to see people that I never see anywhere else — once a year, at Greenbuild. One thing stressed in the opening remarks is that this stuff we're doing is about people, and I can get behind that completely.

Sheryl Crow put on a fine show.

Rick Fedrizzi says so In Cosentino's box Al Gore, live on TV Watching the plenary in Cosentino's box Cosentino's third-tier box from the field Sheryl Crow

Read more...

I seem to be on the chemical redlist circuit this month.

Last night at GreenBuild I attended Perkins + Will's panel-and-schmooze event to discuss their brand new precautionary list of 25 chemicals that P+W wants to see out of building products. They've created a publicly available website with their avoid list and you can view the list by MasterFormat divisions, or by health effect, not just by chemical. So instead of glazing over while scanning a list of chemicals, a designer can quickly skip to say, Div 07 and find 14 chemicals to watch out for AND a list of alternative materials. P+W is already actively scrubbing the listed chemicals out of their material libraries and specs in favor of alternatives.

Last week I spoke at the Toxics Use Reduction Institute's 20th anniversary conference. TURI and the TUR Act is a model for pragmatic work helping manufacturers in Massachusetts reduce toxics in their processes and products and adopt alternatives that make sense. I spoke about how GreenSpec deals with known and unknown chemical and other constituent hazards in evaluating products (more on that sometime post-Greenbuild) — and also heard some of the latest research on health impacts of nano materials...

As the P+W panel was discussing, a lot comes down to how you deal with what we DON'T know. That's because there's a lot more unknown than known: Few of the some 80 thousand chemicals in use today have been thoroughly tested for environmental, health, and safety; many product constituents are considered trade secret or just too small in quantity to be on the MSDS; and we're discovering that certain classes of compounds (endocrine disrupters, nano materials) don't follow our general understanding of how harm occurs.

Do we ignore what we don't know or do we actively acknowledge this uncertainty as part of making the best decisions we can? When a design firms steps in to lead — and share — in the way Perkins + Will is doing here, it raises the bar.

Next up on the circuit is Pharos — I keep hearing rumors about their new online chemical database. Sometime in the Greenbuild whirlwind I'll make it to their booth for a tour.

I just toured Bonded Logic's Chandler, Arizona plant, 20 minutes outside of Phoenix, where each month the company converts 300 tons of post-industrial recycled denim and other cotton fabric into the UltraTouch line of cotton insulation, sound-proofing materials, duct insulation, and related products. I never knew there was so much I didn't know about cotton insulation!

Liz Obloy, the publisher of Sustainable Facility magazine, and I saw the manufacturing process first hand, from the bales of incoming raw materials to the packaging of finished product. This plant gets the cotton after it's already been fiberized — broken down into the constituent fibers. Bales of polyester and polyolefin "binder" fibers that give the material loft also come into the plant.

The fiberized cotton is treated with a borate solution to make it resistant to fire, mold, mildew, and pests.

Read more...