The first rammed-earth walls used dirt combined with simple, natural materials like straw, all compacted together and dried. Later, lime, pozzolans (which can act like cement), and other ingredients were added to improve the compressive strength, moisture resistance, and other characteristics.

SIREWALL takes rammed earth and modernizes it by constructing walls made from carefully selected local inorganic soils precisely mixed with portland cement, pozzolans, iron oxides for color, and proprietary admixtures that improve strength and resistance to moisture and efflorescence.

Despite the current high volume of multifamily construction, it can be hard to find green products in some parts of this sector. Kitchen cabinetry is one such area. Have you ever tried to find residential cabinets that can be ordered in volume and are also made 1) in North America 2) with low-emitting materials and 3) wood or fiber certified to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standard?

We have. It took a long time. Hopefully this article will save you from replicating the same search for your next multifamily project.

LED lighting is now ubiquitous—a good thing for energy efficiency, but it poses a challenge. With so many products and manufacturers to choose from, how do you know which products will last? Which ones will perform as expected or even exceed expectations?

The Next Generation Luminaires (NGL) Design Competition strives to answer these questions and more, with the winners representing the best LED luminaires available. That’s because the NGL Competition is judged by an independent, unbiased panel of some of the most accomplished lighting professionals in the U.S. At BuildingGreen, winning the competition—in either the  “outstanding” or “recognized” categories—is a key criterion for the lighting products that we label BuildingGreen Approved, but “notable” products may still need some refinement before being selected.

Copper, chlorinated PVC (CPVC), and cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) all have advantages for potable water piping, but each also comes with environmental life-cycle tradeoffs.

Rigid polypropylene products are an attractive alternative because of their lower impact and cleaner chemistry. Now there’s a promising flexible alternative as well—HyperPure tubing from Legend Valve & Fitting. The product is a drop-in replacement for PEX that is recyclable, thermally fusible, and easier to manufacture because no cross-linking is required.

Editor’s note December 3, 2019: Aquion is currently emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which has caused an interruption in its ability to manufacture the product and provide tech support. See the company’s FAQ for more.

For the last 50 years, saltwater batteries have been the stuff of middle school science projects and Gilligan’s Island episodes. Now they might be poised to transform how the grid integrates renewable energy.

Continuous air and water barriers are labor-intensive to install and vulnerable to human error during construction. Installations are subject to all kinds of problems, starting with poor design and culminating in every imaginable installation error. With its DensElement Barrier System, Georgia-Pacific Gypsum is the latest company to try to solve these problems with an all-in-one sheathing product.

The new fiberglass-faced sheathing from Georgia-Pacific, which has partnered with Prosoco on DensElement, adds a factory-applied air and weather barrier to Georgia-Pacific’s DensGlass exterior sheathing. This layer—bonded with the gypsum core on its exterior face, just beneath the outer fiberglass layer—is designed to manage the majority of air and water leakage. Installed just like DensGlass, DensElement then requires liquid flashing (Prosoco’s R-Guard FastFlash) at screw heads, joints, and transitions. What it doesn’t require is an additional building wrap or liquid-applied membrane.

In our series of articles beginning with A Guide to Selecting Sustainable Textiles, we detailed some of the obstacles to finding an environmentally responsible contract textile. For one thing, upholstery, draperies, panel fabrics, and other textiles can be made from many different natural and synthetic fiber types, and sometimes they are blended, making it difficult to trace their origin. Some of these textiles are imported from countries with few environmental or labor controls.

But there are many sustainable textiles made in North America and Europe. To find them, look for environmentally preferred fibers from distributors that have optimized search engines to help designers select the best options based on end use, certifications, fiber, and other criteria.

The possible health risks associated with playing on artificial turf with crumb-rubber infill are getting a lot of media attention. Just last month, three federal agencies in the U.S. agreed to identify and fill research gaps about the controversial material, which is made primarily from used car tires. Their work could be critical for sorting out the risks for athletes and children who play daily on existing fields and playgrounds.

But these research findings don’t really matter at all for your next school design or other project that includes a playing field. That’s because there are plenty of alternatives to crumb rubber already widely available on the market.

Rubber flooring has attractive sustainability features, yet the chemistry of rubber manufacturing can be problematic. We took a hard look at the rubber flooring industry and found two manufacturers whose products stand out as the greenest in this tricky category.

Green attributes of rubber flooring

Rubber is comfortable to stand and walk on—crucial for nurses, for example, who stay on their feet all through a shift. It also can reduce injury when patients or children fall.

We are used to talking about building products and materials that introduce toxic substances into our buildings, but what about products engineered to keep them out?

At Greenbuild this year, we did look at furniture with low emissions, but we also scoped out products that reduce the carcinogen radon—a significant problem in many areas—and those that improve the indoor environment through natural daylighting. We also visited previous Top 10 winners that displayed advances on their original technologies.