U.S. Green Building Council membership reached 5,000 on September 2, when Ro-Bar Technical Services, LLC of Boise, Idaho joined the organization. Membership had reached 4,000 in February 2004 (see EBN

Vol. 13, No. 3).

College Publishing of Glen Allen, Virginia has announced that the inaugural edition of the

Journal of Green Building will be published in Spring 2005. The peer-reviewed, technical journal will “provide a high-quality, interdisciplinary forum for advancing the state of knowledge about green building and high performance, sustainable... Read more

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has updated its Construction Waste Management Database, housed on the Whole Building Design Guide Web site, to help reduce the amount of construction and demolition waste going to incinerators and landfills. Waste haulers, processors, and recyclers are also encouraged to advertise on the Web site.... Read more

Environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) is often tagged as a solution to many technical shortcomings of LEED®. On September 29, 2004, with support from Wayne Trusty, President of the Athena™ Sustainable Materials Institute, USGBC convened a meeting of industry groups and LCA database and tool developers to establish a plan for incorporating... Read more

Sixteen hundred new San Francisco homes will be built to save energy, lowering expenses for their low-income owners, according to a memorandum of understanding between the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and developer Lennar/BVHP, LLC. The homes will be built on a 78-acre (32 ha) plot of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, which the U.S... Read more

I wanted to tell you that my ease in passing the LEED® Accredited Professional test is in large part due to my loyal reading of your newsletter for the last several years. Thanks for your excellent coverage of green issues.

Sarah Nettleton, AIA

Sarah Nettleton Architects

Minneapolis, MN

Editors’ Response: Reading... Read more

Ten years ago, when the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) opened their doors in Oaxaca, Mexico,

Environmental Building News welcomed it as an organization with “the potential to become the global watchdog of forest management through an entirely voluntary process” (see

EBN

Vol. 3, No. 5). We also pointed out controversy... Read more

Virtually all of the chemicals used in pressure-treated wood—CCA (chromated copper arsenate), ACQ (ammonium copper quaternary), copper azole, and even borates—are formulated to do one thing: kill organisms that decay or eat wood. It stands to reason that chemicals selected for their toxicity might also affect humans and ecosystems. Most uses of... Read more

Following six years of development, MechoShade Systems, Inc., the shade screen industry leader, has introduced a new product aimed directly at the green market. Their PVC-free EcoVeil™—made of a new thermoplastic olefin (TPO) yarn called EarthTex™, developed by MechoShade’s textile partner, the Twitchell™ Corporation—is the first solar shade... 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

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

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

ozone levels in the eastern half of the U.S. exceed air quality standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), predicts a report published by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The study,

Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More... 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

The day-long seminar “Educating the Educators: A Crash Course on Eco Design™” is intended to quickly

bring design educators up-to-speed on green design. David Bergman, architect and teacher at Parsons School of Design, and Erika Doering, interior designer and teacher at Parsons and Pratt Institute, developed the program with the... Read more