The last couple weeks I've written about two of the common myths of green building: that it has to cost more to build green and that green building is mostly about materials. This week I'll cover another myth: that green building products don't perform as well as conventional products.

A lot of people still point to products like early water-saving toilets, compact-fluorescent lamps, and recycled-plastic-lumber decking as evidence that new-fangled green products don't work very well. Clearly, there were some poorly performing products out there as manufacturers scrambled to respond to consumer demand and new regulations. But, for the most part, we've climbed up that learning curve, and current-generation products work very well.

Let's take a look at the history of a few of these product categories.

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Go figure I'd finish a feature article (Chemistry for Designers: Understanding Hazards in Building Products) saying there's no certification in the USA for products that are hazard-free and immediately a label gets launched. That's ok, I have no complaints with things moving fast in this field.

I haven't dug into the details enough to vouch for this system yet – but the Hazardous Substance Free product label (HSF Mark), launched March 1, looks pretty good at first glance, though only for powered products (appliances, heating & cooling equipment, lighting, and home and office electronics).

Products with the HSF Mark meet hazard restrictions set by ROHS, WEEE, or REACH (three European regulations addressing respectively, hazards in electronics, electronic waste, and a more general overarching program on chemical hazards in products). This means these products may still include listed hazards at the reduced levels acceptable in the regulation, or hazards we don't know about. But this is about as good as it gets right now, until people start proactively looking at hazardous properties instead of specific listed chemicals (the GreenScreen and BASTA systems mentioned in the feature article do this, but it's rare).

To use the HSF Mark, Manufacturers (and their supply chain) have to engage in a "hazardous substance process management (HSPM) system, which includes a 3rd party assessment and annual surveillance – so rather than just testing the specific product, they're looking at the whole process, which I think is better in the long run. The plan is to have an online database of these products – supposedly there are over 2000 certified HSPM companies now with products that qualify now - but we'll have to wait and see if this turns out to be truly useful to purchasers in the US.

I've wanted to write a practitioners guide to addressing chemicals in building products for a while now, and with new developments like the Perkins+Will Precautionary List, The launch of Pharos, The EPA's announcement on a new approach to chemical policy, the time finally seemed right.

By necessity, the March EBN feature article is an overview--glossing over a lot of the details--but while it is true that generalizations can be problematic, the details can also distract and confuse. Focusing on flame retardant chemicals one-by-one led manufacturers to replace the banned PBBs with PBDEs, most of which were later banned except DBDE, which is now starting to get banned. EBN has for many years advocated for a more comprehensive approach--as illustrated by our 2004 editorial, "Beyond a ban of PBDEs."

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Back in 1990, when I built a new garage and office space at my home in Dummerston, Vermont (where BuildingGreen started out), I installed two sections of Lightolier lighting track with dual switching for use of whatever screw-in lamps I wanted to use in can-type fixtures as well as exposed sockets. During the twenty years since, this has been my little testing laboratory for state-of-the-art energy-saving lamps. I've installed the latest compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), cold-cathode CFLs, and, more recently, LED lamps.

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I was at Efficiency Vermont's Better Buildings Conference in Burlington, Vermont last week. It's a great conference each February to learn about energy-efficient construction and find out about innovations in energy-conserving products, from lighting to heating systems.

Wandering around the trade show at Better Buildings, my attention was caught by several cut-away window corners at the Marvin Windows & Doors booth. For years at conferences, I've made it a point to ask the mainstream window manufacturers when they will give more attention to triple-glazed windows. Usually I just get blank stares from the salespeople.

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I gotta say, I was pretty surprised to come across this product recently. I make it a habit of keeping up with new products as they come out--especially insulation materials. I had somehow missed this.

Dow Chemical launched SafeTouch in a few select markets in 2007, but expanded availability late last year to 53 market areas, mostly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states and exclusively through Lowes stores. You can find stores carrying the product using this locator.

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Over the years I've held a lot of job titles and have done most kitchen jobs, from cleaning a large supperclub's grease traps in mid-July after the obligatory upper-Midwestern Friday fish fry (I don't recommend that as a career path) to picking herbs and edible flowers from the garden that I'd use in lobster salads at a Relais & Châteaux restaurant (that was a pretty good job).

So when I started writing the article Commercial Kitchens: Cooking up Green Opportunities for Environmental Building News I knew there wasn't enough space to adequately cover all the stories, equipment, and processes encompassing sustainable commercial kitchens.

Kitchen size and demands vary enormously; each piece of equipment is worthy of a feature article; and don't get me started on menu choices and sustainable agriculture. Yet I hoped to give at least a cross section of the some of the more important issues.

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We first wrote about TimberSIL from TimberSIL Products in a 2004 article in EBN, touting the company's treated wood as a revolution in the treated wood industry. From an environmental standpoint, a recent enhancement makes the product even better.

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Environmental Building News first introduced waterless urinals to the green building community--back in February 1998 in a product review of the No-Flush Urinal from the Waterless Company. In the 12 years since then, we've profiled as many as a dozen waterless urinals as they've entered the market.

Most waterless urinals, including those from industry pioneers Waterless Company and Falcon Waterfree Technologies, rely on a plastic cartridge that holds a lighter-than-urine vegetable-oil fluid that serves as the sanitary trap (preventing sewer gases from entering the restroom). Though water savings are dramatic, there are at least four problems with this approach:

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We've promoted the Forest Stewardship Council's wood certification program in the pages of Environmental Building News since FSC was formed back in 1994. We've always looked for companies offering FSC-certified wood products to highlight in EBN and GreenSpec. Over the years, most of those products have been from small companies; larger more industrial timber industry companies have shied away from FSC in favor of the less-rigorous Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) certification.

While we continue to feel great about small companies embracing FSC, we also find it exciting when larger players enter the FSC world--because these companies will help FSC become more accepted by the mainstream timber and building-products industries.

Thus, we were really pleased recently to learn that Armstrong World Industries, one of the world's largest flooring manufacturers, had entered the FSC world with FSC-certified engineered hardwood flooring products.

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