Hydronics engineer Tom Meyer has enough experience to know that what gets built is never exactly what is on the plans. He has also observed that most of the people who actually build green buildings are not well served by the education and training opportunities in today’s green building world. Those insights led him to create the Green... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has announced the next phase of its initiative to review how forest certification programs are addressed in the LEED Rating System (see

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Vol. 15, No. 6). The Yale University-based consultant team hired to support the effort has posted its research reports for expert review, and LEED’s... Read more

Manufactured wood products—including plywood, oriented-strand board (OSB), laminated-strand lumber, particleboard, and medium-density fiberboard (MDF)—have the environmental advantage of being made from small-diameter or other low-quality trees or waste from wood-processing operations, conserving higher-quality timber. With these products, the... Read more

The U.S Environmental Protection Agency, The American Institute of Architects, the Building Materials Reuse Association, and West Coast Green have announced the winners of the Lifecycle Building Challenge (see EBNVol. 16, No. 3). Created to recognize innovations in building disassembly and materials reuse, the competition invited both built and... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has created a new website, Energy Star Quantity Quotes, to help those wishing to purchase Energy Star appliances and equipment in bulk. After registering with the website, purchasers can request price quotes from Energy Star partner companies; the website currently has supplier listings for light bulbs,... Read more

The method provides the first... Read more

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has announced the creation of the National Green Building Program, which will be launched in February 2008. The first iteration of the program will be based on the Green Home Building Guidelines written by NAHB (see

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Vol. 14, No. 2); the National Green Building Standard being... Read more

Philips Lighting Company has announced a new line of T-8 fluorescent lamps using the company’s Alto II technology to replace its ten-year-old Alto technology. Each new lamp contains 1.7 mg of mercury, compared to 3.5 milligrams (mg) in each original Alto lamp. “Through some innovative approaches to mercury doses and retention in the lamp... Read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized new Energy Star specifications for commercial dishwashers and ice machines. Starting on October 11, 2007, manufacturers will be able to qualify their dishwashers for the Energy Star label; the specification for ice machines will not take effect until January 1, 2008. According to Gwen... Read more

In the first official federal statement about the chemical’s risks, a panel of scientists for the Center for Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction, part of the National Institutes of Health, concluded in August 2007 that bisphenol-A poses “some concern” for human health. After looking at more than 500 animal studies of the chemical, used to... Read more

In July 2007 the Whole Systems Integrated Process Guide (WSIP) 2007 for Sustainable Buildings & Communities, ANSI/MTS Standard WSIP 2007, was approved by public ballot. “Everybody is coming to the realization that there is a pattern of practicing an integrated design process for buildings,” said Bill Reed, AIA, chair of the committee that... Read more

When Philips Lighting Company first introduced its Alto technology in 1995, the average amount of mercury in a four-foot (1.2 m) T-8 Alto fluorescent lamp was 14 mg. By encapsulating the mercury and creating a chemical barrier coating to prevent absorption of the mercury by the phosphor coating, Philips was able to lower the amount of mercury... Read more

In August 2007, President George W. Bush signed the “America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act,” or the “America COMPETES” act. The bill authorizes funding for an array of programs in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and a number of... Read more

Back in August 1999, I participated in a U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) charrette to craft the LEED 2.0 Rating System from the original LEED 1.0 pilot. The small workgroup focused on site and ecosystem issues, in which I participated, sought to remove any bias that encouraged building on previously undeveloped sites. We ended up with five... Read more

At its annual conference in New York in July 2007, the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) announced a seven-point energy savings challenge for its more than 16,500 members. The challenge calls for BOMA members to decrease energy consumption in existing buildings by 30% across their portfolios by 2012 and benchmark every building’s... Read more

MetroPaint, a 100% recycled-content latex paint produced in Portland, Oregon, has become the first paint to be certified under Green Seal’s recycled-content paint standard (see

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Vol. 15, No. 12). The paint is produced by Metro, a regional council that collects unused paint as part of its waste management programs. To achieve... Read more