The Slag Cement Association has recognized two projects for replacing energy-intensive portland cement with blast-furnace-slag cement, an industrial waste byproduct from the reduction of iron ore to iron (see EBN

Vol. 8, No. 6).

Clearview Elementary School in Hanover, Pennsylvania (see

EBN

Vol. 11, No. 11 or... Read more

Several regions of the country are experiencing a

shortage of portland cement, the key ingredient in concrete. According to the Portland Cement Association (PCA), among the chief causes for this shortage are increased demand in the residential sector and limited availability of ships to carry imported cement, which in turn is blamed... Read more

, president of the nonprofit Trust for Sustainable Development and founder of the Villages of Loreto Bay in Baja California Sur, has been given the

Good Neighbor Award by the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit bilateral coalition of businesspeople working to promote trade, investment, and joint ventures on... Read more

Chicago Bungalow, constructed by the tens of thousands in the early 1900s to house the city’s working class. Bungalow owners can now take advantage of matching grants from the Chicago Department of Environment for up to $2,000 toward improvements in windows, doors, and insulation,... Read more

U.S. Plastic Lumber (USPL) filed voluntary petitions for bankruptcy in late July 2004. The company is seeking debtor-in-possession financing, available only to companies in Chapter 11, to support its current operations and has hired Triax Capital Advisors to direct its reorganization. “Our filing provides U.S. Plastic Lumber with the... Read more

The Natural Resources Defense Council

Robert Redford Building in Santa Monica, California has won a

Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). The building, designed by Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists, simultaneously addresses green building and New Urbanist concerns (see

EBN

Vol... Read more

, warns an article in the July 2004 issue of the

Journal of Light Construction (JLC). According to Kevin Hansen, who recently investigated abandoned tannery sites in the Wilmington, Delaware region for Tetra Tech, Inc., the leather-making industry used to soak animal hides in a slurry of lime and arsenic... Read more

Formaldehyde is a human carcinogen, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer. The agency upgraded its evaluation of formaldehyde from a probable carcinogen to a known one after the release of new evidence that formaldehyde causes nasopharyngeal cancer in humans. Based on... Read more

Seattle’s

Environmental Home Center (EHC), profiled in “Getting the ‘Right Stuff’: A Guide to Green Building Materials Retailers” (EBN

Vol. 10, No. 4), lost its main warehouse, showroom, and offices to a fire on August 11, 2004. Two warehouses remain standing, however, and the company has laid out an aggressive recovery plan in... Read more

Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet by Vijay Vaitheeswaran; Farrar,... Read more

2004 Energy Efficiency Integration Awards: the

Cesar E. Chavez Education Center in Oakland, the

Challengers Tennis Club for Boys and Girls in Los Angeles, and

Lake View Terrace Branch Library in Los Angeles (the latter two of which are profiled in... Read more

University of Manitoba interior design students

Tamara Nyysola and

Corina Penner have won the first-ever

GreenInteriors Student Design Competition. Dow BioProducts, Inc. and

Interior Design magazine sponsored the first annual competition, which drew 55 entries from 14 design schools across North America. The... Read more

There’s a lot of pavement in the United States—nearly 38,000 square miles (9.9 Million ha) or an area about the size of Indiana, according to calculations EBN has done (Vol. 5, No. 1). The vast majority of this is impermeable surface that contributes to stormwater runoff. In certain applications, that pavement can be made porous so that the... Read more

There’s a new option for potable-water, hydronic-heating, and other pressurized piping applications: polypropylene from the German company Aquatherm, GmbH. Aquatherm has been producing high-quality Fusiotherm® polypropylene (PP) piping for 30 years with tremendous success—never having paid a claim for damage due to failure of the piping,... Read more

Steelcase, Inc. has announced its Environmental Partnership Program, enabling companies to resell, refurbish, donate, or recycle used Steelcase office products through a network of recyclers, resellers, and nonprofit organizations. “Today, many companies are not sure what to do with their furniture when it reaches the end of its useful life to... Read more

tidal turbines in New York City’s East River will begin cranking out about 150 kilowatts (kW) of electricity. If all goes as planned, a tidal power farm of 200 to 300 of the 15-foot-tall (4.5 m) turbines will be installed, beginning in the fall of 2005. These will produce about 10 megawatts (MW) of power by 2006, enough... Read more

On July 15, 2004 the California Department of Health Services (DHS) released its “

Standard Practice for the Testing of Volatile Organic Emissions from Various Sources Using Small-Scale Environmental Chambers.” This practice document supersedes the small-scale environmental chamber testing portion of California Specification 01350 and... Read more

I found your recent feature article on flame retardants [

Vol. 13, No. 6] to be very enlightening. You have written it with your usual thoroughness. That’s why I subscribe to

EBN and why I tell my students to subscribe. I find so much of what you report to be valuable for clients and students.

[Sometimes] I assess houses... Read more