The First Annual National Environmental Sensitivity Award from the Construction Specification Institute was awarded to BSW International of Tulsa, Oklahoma. BSW is known for catering to corporate clients, such as Wal-Mart, with repetitive building programs. BSW’s Green Team prepared the winning entry in the form of their Environmental... Read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Navy are sponsoring a student design competition, Breaking Through Barriers: Balancing Ecology and Economics, to help identify options for what to do with a military base being decommissioned. A key requirement of the competition is that teams must be interdisciplinary, including (at a... Read more

James McElvenny has left his long-time position as assistant vice president of research and development with Wood Recycling Incorporated of Woburn, Massachusetts to become Director of Recycling Projects for the Wood Products Division of the J.M. Huber Company (508/524-8804). In his new position McElvenny will continue his ongoing efforts to... Read more

Expanding on its four-year-old carpet testing program (see

EBN

Vol. 3, No. 6), the Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) has launched a similar program to test emissions from carpet adhesives. Initiated on March 31, 1996, the new program will test samples of participating product lines quarterly. Products that meet program guidelines... Read more

The NAHB Research Center is seeking applications for the 1997 EnergyValue Housing Award, a national award for builders who integrate energy efficiency into the design, construction, and marketing of their new homes. Applications are due August 2, 1996, and winners will be announced at the 1997 NAHB Builders Show. For information, contact:... Read more

In spite of tight construction budgets, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based architecture firm Innovative Design, Inc. has convinced several regional school districts to incorporate roof monitors for... Read more

Advisory Board member Michael Nicklas received the American Solar Energy Society’s (ASES) highest award on April 22, for his contribution to ASES and to the field of solar energy. The 1996 Abbott Award is the first to go to a practitioner in the use of solar energy, rather than to a researcher. In his acceptance speech, Nicklas noted that... Read more

The March 1996 issue of

Energy Design Update reports that fire tests at a laboratory in California have demonstrated that spray-applied cellulose insulation can be a more effective fire stop than conventional wood firestops in a 2x4 wall. The testing was done as part of an effort to gain Uniform Building Code (UBC) approval for the... Read more

Are our buildings making us sick? Yes, say an increasing number of indoor air quality specialists in government agencies, academia, and the emerging industry working to solve these problems. By some estimates, direct medical costs associated with IAQ problems in the United States are as high as $15 billion per year, with indirect costs of $60... Read more

The January 22nd issue of

Newsweek—with a cover story suggesting that global warming might be responsible for the season’s intense blizzards—arrived about the same time as a letter from my father-in-law. “So much for global warming,” he noted with a jab, in response to the harsh weather we were enduring.

Motorists in Germany can now save on their auto insurance rates if they use public transportation. As reported in the February 23rd issue of

Global Environmental Change Report the German insurance company Rheinland (Neuss) has begun offering a 10% discount for policyowners who hold annual passes for the national railway system or for a... Read more

Builders and designers committed to energy- and resource-efficient construction strategies have long struggled with building codes that mandate conventional practice, even when alternatives might be more sensible. A new addition to the Lake County, Illinois building code offers one solution to this problem—in a complete, take-it-or-leave-it... Read more

Joseph Demkin, editor. The American Institute of Architects. Published annually by John Wiley & Sons, 1996. Three-ring-bound. $150 + $2.50 for handling. Call 800/225-5945 to order.

Environmental Resource Guide (ERG) uses an effective combination of text and graphics to convey the environmental implications of building... Read more

Willammette Industries, Inc. has just retooled a particleboard mill in Eugene, Oregon to produce a higher-quality medium-density fiberboard (MDF) using at least 50% recycled wood. The mill will use wood waste from construction sites, pallets, and packing crates.

100 pages; $5.00 covers postage & handling. Available from the American Forest & Paper Association, 1111 19th Street, NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036.

Wood and paper recycling could be used to achieve 10-20% of the U.S. carbon reduction goal, according to scientists at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin. Recycling wood and paper reduces net carbon emissions by reducing timber harvesting, which in turn increases the amount of carbon sequestered by living trees, and by... Read more

Thank you for the review you gave WWPA’s

Eco-Profile of Lumber Produced in the Western United States: Life Cycle Inventory of WWPA Western Lumber. Your comments on the study were both thorough and fair.

The Natural Step held the first of many planned one-day workshops this February in Denver, Colorado and in Marion, Massachusetts to acquaint business leaders with this innovative movement that is quickly gaining steam in Europe. The... Read more

Tree Talk, Inc., PO Box 426, Burlington, Vermont 05402; 802/863-6789, 802/863-4344 (fax), wow@together.net (e-mail). CD-ROM Pro version: $99; CD-ROM standard version: $29.95; Compact (floppy disk) version: $19.95.

Woods of the World (WoW) in July 1994, it had lots of useful information but also lots of gaps, and... Read more