Link to video(No relation to the post B'eau-Pal Bottled Water - Dichlormethane, Carbon Tetrachloride, Chloroform... and kudos to our prescient commenter Matthew, who last September predicted the 2020 headline, "Bottled Water Outlawed Worldwide.")

Ah, if only it were possible to be a fly-on-the-wall in every committee for every standard... I know this is a fantasy only a standards-geek could have, and is one of those fantasies you don't really want to actualize, but there's no doubt much of the real work defining the rules of the game is done in committee meetings that most of us never hear about.

Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here — it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time. Here's an unformatted, text-only version of the current bulletin:

We recently learned that the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) is losing its Massachusetts state funding. This strikes particularly close to home for me as I worked briefly with TURI after grad school and was quite impressed with the caliber of their work (and yes, full disclosure, I still have friends there).

Standard residential construction in much of the country is 2x4 framing with fiberglass insulation, achieving a paltry R-10 or so in the walls. If insulation is installed at all on the foundation walls, it's rarely more than an inch thick, and insulation is almost never put under slabs. In Vermont, we typically do a lot better. Act 250, enacted nearly four decades ago, required developers to improve energy performance and that led to a widespread switch to 2x6 framing in home building.

The label says:Bottled at Source — Hand Pump #1, Atal Ayub Nagar, Bhopal, Madya Pradesh, India. And in tiny print:Not suitable for human consumption.The nutrition label says: Total Fat 0g

Cholesterol 0g

Sodium 22mg

Dichlormethane

Carbon Tetrachloride

Chloroform

0%

0%

1%

-400%

-200,000%

-250%

I'm starting a fun new weekly feature on Twitter, #fridayrefresh. Every Friday I will suggest a topic that needs a better solution than the current status quo such as, "building codes don't keep up with green building #fridayrefresh" and "k-cups go straight in the trash #fridayrefresh". In response, please share your thoughts, ideas, solutions, links, and horror stories.

One of the biggest hurtles in designing to Living Building Challenge standards is finding local materials, as we discuss here. The folks at Cascadia Green Building Council have found a website that may help: www.stillmadeinusa.com.

But summer has hardly started!

As we fire up the grill and hope that the rain will let up enough for us to enjoy summer, we should also remember that the days are now getting shorter, and in just a few months we'll be firing up our heating systems again.

Now's the time to think about how we can keep our heating costs down next winter. Here I'll present a few of my top priorities in preparing for winter:

Word's been filtering out recently about LEEDuser.com, which — marked by today's press release and a notice in the current issue of Environmental Building News — has officially soft-launched in beta with partial content. Registration is free, but only for a while.

Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here — it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time. Here's an unformatted, text-only version of the current bulletin:

"Apparently an error in construction," the story says. Indeed.

Here's a free webinar (this Wednesday, July 8, at 4 p.m. ET) for you green contractor types about getting the subs on board — or at least in line with the goals of green. Chances are good that there will be things worth knowing for non-professionals, too.

Calmac IceBank tanks at One Bryant Park, one of the nation's greenest high-rise buildings. Photo: © Gunther Intelmann for Cook+Fox Architects

BuildingGreen's Michael Wentz has been coordinating for some time with DOE on case studies of the green rebuilding of Greensburg, Kansas, which had 90% of its buildings destroyed by a tornado in 2007. He described the work in a blog post here last year.