... Read more

Stratospheric levels of chlorine should peak by the year 2000, according to the 14 June issue of

Global Environmental Change Report. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado, have been measuring levels of various CFCs and HCFCs in the lower atmosphere (troposphere) since 1991 and... Read more

At the Fourth Congress for the New Urbanism, held this past May in Charleston, South Carolina, more than 200 participants signed a charter that defines, for the first time, exactly what new urbanism is. The charter was developed in part to dispel criticism that new urbanism is really just a mild form of suburban... Read more

Environment Design Guide, The Royal Australian Institute of Architects. Australian$126 for four quarterly installments (approximately US$100). Order from RAIA-Environment; The Royal Australian Institute of Architects, P.O. Box 3373, Manuka ACT 263, Australia; +61 6 273 1953 (fax). Full set of 24 previously... Read more

This is a great tale, but I don’t believe it. The article [

Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 10-11] implies that insulation and airsealing dropped 30 tons (106 kW) of peak load from this 17,000 ft2 (1,600 m2) building. Nor do I believe the peak load of only 20 tons (70 kW) for this building. Indiana has hot... Read more

Closing off streets to cars to create pedestrian malls doesn’t always work.

Land Use Digest, published by the Urban Land Institute, reported in its May 1996 issue that Chicago is joining such cities as Eugene, Little Rock, and Norfolk in reverting pedestrian malls back into regular streets. Merchants have complained in these cities that... Read more

With recent restrictions on logging in some publicly owned forests in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., the pressure on forests in Canada’s British Columbia (B.C.) is increasing. A broad array of environmental groups is increasingly vocal about the fate of B.C.’s temperate rainforests, and coalitions... Read more

On-site photovoltaic panels supply much of the electricity, heating loads are met in part with... Read more

In an exciting breakthrough for energy conservation measures in residential development, Roger Perry has announced that all homes in his Meadowmount development in Chapel Hill, North Carolina will be built to guidelines from the Alternative Energy Corporation (AEC). The project will contain 715 houses, and total of 1298 residential units. AEC’... Read more

Christine Hammer, editor.

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If you have an e-mail account and an interest in green building, you should subscribe to

Greenclips. Every two weeks, between six and ten one-paragraph summaries of articles, gleaned from over 60 different publications,... Read more

Now that we at

EBN have finally the caught up with the trends and have created our own website, we can slow down long enough to ask: Why are we doing this, anyway? Didn’t we have enough to do just publishing on paper? At least the courts have struck down Internet censorship, so we don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for... Read more

The April 1996 issue of the well-regarded British publication

Green Building Digest reports that Malaysia—one of the world’s largest plywood exporters—now stamps all of its plywood with the label “Sustainable Timber” even though, according to the Malaysian government, the country will be a net timber importer by the end of the century... Read more

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1996. 445 pages, hardcover, $34.95.

Near the top of that list is Ian McHarg, a Scottish war hero who went on to found the landscape architecture program... Read more

I’ve worked the last 25 years on developing parts of what is now called “Eco-design,” under the belief that healthier buildings, lower energy use, and less ecological impact were important. This was only to discover recently that all this time I was still looking at things in isolation rather in their ecological interconnectedness!

A one-square-foot sample of low-e glazing, representing the one billionth square foot produced, was recently presented to Christine Ervin, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy by Mike Koenig of Andersen Windows and Jim Larsen of Cardinal IG. The presentation was in recognition of ongoing support provided by DOE of window... Read more

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) manufacturers representing 70% of the EPS industry recently joined together in April 1995 to form a trade organization, the EPS Molders Association, to more effectively promote their products. According to the May 1996 issue of

Energy Design Update, this development should help solve one of the biggest... Read more

Schuller Corporation, a publicly traded manufacturer of fiberglass insulation based in Denver, Colorado, announced on May 17 that it is acquiring NRG Barriers of Portland, Maine, one of the nation’s leading producers of polyisocyanurate foam insulation. Both Schuller and NRG have been leaders in improving the environmental characteristics of... Read more

Nuclear proponents have often pointed to the low electricity prices in France as evidence that high reliance on nuclear power keeps electricity prices low. But by comparing

pre-tax electricity rates, that claim is dispelled. According to the May/June issue of

World Watch Magazine, the three European countries with the lowest pre... Read more