The Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) was created in 2002 to help the industry meet the carpet recycling and reuse goals set forth by the Memorandum of Understanding for Carpet Stewardship (MOU), a voluntary agreement signed by members of the carpet industry, government entities, and nongovernmental organizations. How successful is CARE?... Read more

My Office is Killing Me!: The Sick Building Survival Guideby Jeffrey C. May. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2006. Paperback, 317 pages, $18.95.

Behnisch, Behnisch & Partner in Stuttgart, Germany, under the leadership of Stefan Behnisch, is now Behnisch Architekten. The firm’s Venice, California, office, led by Stefan Behnisch and Christof Jantzen, AIA, has also changed its name, to Behnisch Architects. Founded in 1989, the firm has long been recognized as a leader in architectural... Read more

In May 2006, the U.S. Senate confirmed Dirk Kempthorne to succeed Gale Norton as head of the Department of the Interior, which manages 20% of all land in the U.S. Kempthorne, who has served in the U.S. Senate and as governor of Idaho, has worked to open national lands to logging, mining, and drilling; the League of Conservation Voters (LCV)... Read more

Smart Environments Awards. Co-sponsored by

Metropolis magazine, the awards were intended to recognize the most environmentally and socially responsible, beautiful, and functional interior designs of the past five years. The winners are:... Read more

If a proposed regulation from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is adopted as planned on September 28, 2006, the U.S. market for particleboard and similar interior-grade panel products will change dramatically. The proposed regulation drastically reduces the allowable levels of urea-formaldehyde (UF) emissions from composite wood... Read more

Two projects under development, one in Boston, Massachusetts, and one in Cabinda, Angola, were among the projects recognized in June at the fourteenth Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) in Providence, Rhode Island. CNU’s 2006 Charter Awards recognize work that demonstrates an understanding of urbanism and the principles embodied in the CNU... Read more

An upscale Tahoe Vista, California, restaurant, Wild Goose, recently became the first restaurant to receive certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED® rating system for commercial interiors (LEED-CI). CCS Architecture, of San Francisco, remodeled the 10,000 ft2 (930 m2) restaurant for East West Partners. Among Wild Goose’s... Read more

Outside the window a phoebe was bringing food to her nest under the eaves. I had positioned myself next to the window in the small lecture room as I always try to do at meetings—when I am fortunate enough to be in a meeting facility with windows. Being able to glance out the window from time to time helps me relax and, I think, even focus on... Read more

We are thrilled to announce that Tristan Roberts has joined our staff as associate editor of

Environmental Building News. Tristan grew up on a small dairy farm in upstate New York; attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts; graduated from Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont, with a degree in philosophy and... Read more

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) will accept presentation proposals for its 2007 national convention and design exposition, themed “Growing Beyond Green,” through July 1, 2006. The conference will be held May 3-5, 2007, in San Antonio. Details are online at www.aia.org/conted_convention/. For more on AIA’s commitment to green design... Read more

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) dominate the plenum-rated electrical and data cable market (see

EBN

Vol. 13, No. 3), but a newcomer from GE Plastics could offer an intriguing alternative. In December 2005, Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. (UL) listed GE’s Flexible Noryl® resin for wire coating... Read more

Innovative Design, Inc., of Raleigh, North Carolina, was recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for “Excellence in Energy Efficiency.” The company was honored in March 2006 as the first architecture firm to receive recognition for energy-efficient design. The recognition was based on Innovative Design’s participation in... Read more

Arizona Public Service Company (APS) has announced the opening of the state’s first solar-thermal power plant, and the first built in the nation in 17 years. Built by Solargenix Energy, LLC, of Raleigh, North Carolina, the plant features over 100,000 ft2 (9,000 m2) of parabolic-trough mirrors—looking like several rows of mirrored half-pipe—that... Read more

A water conservation bill currently moving through the California Legislature would set the maximum water consumption for toilets at 1.3 gallons per flush (gpf; 4.9 lpf). The legislation, Assembly Bill 2496, was authored by John Laird (D–Santa Cruz) and passed the State Assembly on May 15, 2006. If approved by the Senate and signed into law,... Read more

U.S. emissions of greenhouse gasses, which cause global warming, rose 1.7% between 2003 and 2004, to the highest level on record, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Citing reductions in methane and nitrous oxide emissions, EPA claimed progress. “While the U.S. economy expanded by 51% from 1990 to 2004, emissions have... Read more