by Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan. Island Press, Washington, D.C., 1996. 200 pages; hardcover $40.00; paperback $19.95.

The distinction of being the first government body to officially adopt a straw-bale construction code goes to the Napa County (California) Board of Supervisors. The Board adopted the voluntary guidelines in California’s new law, based on Assembly Bill 1314. The guidelines still require an engineer’s stamp on all plans, however, as does every... Read more

Real Goods’ new “Solar Living Center” in Hopland, California will demonstrate the philosophies of energy independence and living in harmony with nature that the company preaches. Real Goods hired Sym Van der Ryn’s... Read more

A workshop on the linking and prioritizing of environmental criteria in building assessments was held this past November in Toronto. Workshop organizers had hoped that the participants would help figure out ways to prioritize environmental criteria so that practitioners in the building industry can focus the most energy and attention where they... Read more

At a workshop sponsored by Environment Canada’s Winnipeg, Manitoba office, participants decided to establish the Used Building Materials Association as a networking forum and common voice for the salvage and reuse industry. With a core group of twelve American and Canadian nonprofit and for-profit salvage and reuse organizations, the... Read more

Your article “What’s New in Construction Waste Management” moved me to write—and to finally subscribe. I’ve been sharing a subscription with someone else, but now I feel I can’t wait for the

EBN to come my way. So be it if I’m being environmentally incorrect by ordering my own copy. Or is it? What is

EBN’s position on that?

A campus for the new Dreamworks Studio at Playa Vista, formed last year by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen, will soon be under construction. Environmental consultant John Picard of E Squared is responsible for bringing an ecological design awareness to the project and coordinating design of the communications systems for... Read more

The San Francisco Institute of Architecture (SFIA) has just announced a new Master’s Degree program in Ecological Design. A professional certificate is also available, and the program is not limited to students of architecture. Enrollment is open for the Spring 1996 semester, which begins February 26. Contact the SFIA Information Office, Box... Read more

If our goal is to reduce the overall environmental impact of our building projects, we must begin paying more attention to the role automobiles play in these projects. Even the most environmentally responsible house—for example, an energy-independent, passive-solar house, built of salvaged and recycled materials, with graywater separation—will... Read more

The Woodworker’s Alliance for Rainforest Protection (WARP), a leading promoter of lesser-known species and other lumber from environmentally preferable sources, is changing its name to the “Good Wood Alliance.” Reasons for the change included a recognition that the environmental issues addressed are not limited to rainforests and that not all... Read more

AS debate heats up on a new Endangered Species Act, revisions to the Clean Water Act, and dozens of other pieces of legislation affecting the environment, it appears as if the primary endangered species is objective information. Congressional opponents of regulation, trade associations, corporations, and... Read more

The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has a new “Wood Reduction Clearinghouse” to disseminate information on ways to reduce waste and find environmentally sound alternatives to wood. Reducing wood use in construction is a primary goal of the service. Contact Dana Harmon at RAN, 450 Sansome Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94111; 415/398-4404, 415/... Read more

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A few years ago, construction waste management and job-site source separation would have been considered nearly synonymous. It makes sense, after all, that if the materials have more value when separated by type, we should try to avoid mixing them together in the first place. While source separation still makes sense for many jobs and for... Read more

Steven Winter Associates, Inc., of Norwalk, Connecticut, has been awarded a grant through the U.S. Department of Energy’s 1995 Small Business Innovative Research program to design advanced modular townhouses for urban infill sites. The company has been charged with designing townhouses that employ renewable energy and energy conservation... Read more

Choosing an environmentally friendly siding material has never been easy. Often the more “natural” products, such as wood clapboards, are associated with depletion of sensitive forest resources, while materials that are highly manufactured—such as vinyl—raise questions about chlorine and petrochemicals as... Read more

For years polystyrene has been just about the only game in town for exterior foundation insulation. The problem is that

extruded polystyrene—the type of polystyrene most commonly used on foundations—is produced with HCFCs that deplete ozone, and

all polystyrene (both extruded and... Read more

Environmental Building Consultants, 312 A Jefferson Ave., Cheltenham, PA 19012-2021; 215/663-1611, 215/663-1637 (fax), ehouse@omni.voicenet.com (e-mail); $50 for PC or Macintosh diskette containing database and software to run it.

This initial release of an IAQ products database contains about 450 listings... Read more

Building Industry Professionals for Environmental Responsibility (BIPER) is a new lobbying group founded to counter the frequently anti-environmental message governments receive from mainstream industry organizations. Annual membership is $35. Three levels of membership allow members to choose the frequency of contacts from the... Read more

The DuPont Benedictus Awards for Innovation in Architectural Laminated Glass may have a significant environmental flavor in 1996 with the inclusion of two prominent “green” architects on the jury. Bob Berkebile of BNIM Architects in Kansas City, Missouri and Randolph Croxton, Croxton Collaborative Architects, New York City, have both been... Read more