BuildingGreen Report

News Brief

June 1, 2003
Richard Haag

is the winner of this year’s

ASLA Medal, bestowed by the American Society of Landscape Architects. Haag was instrumental in saving Seattle’s Pike Place Market, now one of the city’s most popular attractions. A complete list of ASLA award winners is online at

www.asla.org.

News Brief

June 1, 2003

EPA unveiled the online Construction Industry Compliance Assistance Center (CICAcenter) in May, developed by the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, in partnership with the Associated General Contractors of America, the National Association of Home Builders, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, and the Golf Course... Read more

News Analysis

June 1, 2003

Honeywell and BASF completed a major transaction on May 1, when Honeywell sold its worldwide engineering-plastics business to BASF in exchange for BASF’s worldwide nylon-fiber business and $90 million. With this transaction, BASF exited the fibers market to concentrate on plastics. The new Honeywell Nylon division will offer Honeywell’s Anso®... Read more

News Analysis

June 1, 2003

The Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE), created last year by members of the carpet industry, government entities, and nonprofit organizations, has released its first annual report on progress toward the goal of diverting 40% of America’s post-consumer carpet from landfills by 2012. As a first step in the ten-year plan, CARE had hoped to... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2003

SunPower Corporation has announced that their new A-300 crystalline-silicon solar cell converts over one fifth of the sunlight hitting it into electricity. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has verified a

20.4% conversion efficiency for the 125-millimeter, single-crystal A-300 cell, making it likely to become the most efficient... Read more

Product Review

June 1, 2003

Growing its collection of innovations in the flooring industry, Interface, Inc. has introduced FLOR™, a modular flooring system designed for use in homes. FLOR’s ten product lines represent a variety of fabrics, colors, textures, and patterns. According to Chip DeGrace, InterfaceFLOR’s vice president of marketing, “FLOR bridges hard surface and... Read more

News Analysis

June 1, 2003

PPG Coil and Extrusion Coatings has released a variant of its Duranar® coatings for metal roofs that contains special pigments to reduce solar gain. With these new “Duranar SPF” coatings, 98% of PPG’s standard colors meet the EPA Energy Star steep-roof threshold of 25% total solar reflectivity, whereas with standard Duranar coatings about half... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2003

The

University of Cincinnati invites applications for a tenure-track position in the School of Architecture and Interior Design (SAID) in the area of environmental technologies. For further information, contact: David Lee Smith, Professor of Architecture, david.smith@uc.edu, 513-556-5291.

News Brief

June 1, 2003

One hundred thousand homes have earned the Environmental Protection Agency’s

Energy Star® designation. Each home that meets the voluntary criteria uses an average of 30% less energy for heating, cooling, and water heating than a conventional home, saving homeowners about $200 to $400 annually. According to EPA, the program saves... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2003

Arlington, Massachusetts passed a new law in May requiring that construction or substantial renovation of all town-owned buildings achieves LEED™ Silver certification. According to the law, no project will be considered complete until certification has been confirmed by the U.S. Green Building Council or until an equivalent or greater rating... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2003

Hammons School of Architecture at Springfield, Missouri’s Drury University will integrate the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED™ Rating System into its curriculum, beginning this autumn. The school plans to increase the percentage of faculty who are LEED-accredited, offer a new course about the Council and LEED, and increase the prominence of... Read more

Op-Ed

A consortium of environmental groups argues that despite SFI and CSA improvements, FSC remains the sole credible forest certification program.

June 1, 2003

We appreciate EBN’s comprehensive article Forest Certification Growing Fast (EBN Vol. 12, No. 4). While we agree that the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has driven important improvements in forestry and alternative certification programs, we strongly disagree that industry- and government-backed “certification programs are becoming similar... Read more

News Brief

May 1, 2003

Just in time for Earth Day, The American Institute of Architects announced the Top Ten Green Projects for 2003. Winning entries include residential, commercial, and educational projects. The awards program was cosponsored this year by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Building Museum, and hosted online by BuildingGreen, Inc. Full... Read more

News Brief

May 1, 2003

California diverted 48% of its waste stream from landfills in 2002, according to the California Integrated Waste Management Board. A total of 34 million tons (31 million tonnes) of solid waste were diverted last year, a fourfold increase since 1990, when the Integrated Waste Management Act took effect in the state. This law requires every local... Read more

News Analysis

May 1, 2003
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intends to launch an Indoor Air Quality label for homes, according to Sam Rashkin, director of the Energy Star™ Homes Program at EPA. The draft guidelines of the voluntary program are undergoing review this spring, and Rashkin hopes to roll out a pilot by late fall or winter—though he told

EBN that... Read more

News Brief

May 1, 2003

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has named the Energy Center of Wisconsin winner of its

2002 Continuing Education Award for Excellence. The private, nonprofit Energy Center has worked with more than one third of the state’s 1,500 architects through its continuing education programs in an effort to improve the energy... Read more

News Brief

May 1, 2003

Environmentalists won an important victory on April 3, when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted in favor of small-scale renewable-energy production. All net-metered solar and wind systems generating less than 1 MW of electricity, along with some hydrogen fuel cells, are exempt, according to CPUC’s decision, from paying a... Read more

News Analysis

May 1, 2003

On March 25, 2003, the U.S. Green Building Council published a notice with several changes and adjustments to the recently released version 2.1 of its LEED™ Rating System for New Construction (see

EBN

Vol. 11, No. 12). Designers working on projects that are seeking LEED certification are advised to visit the Council’s Web site... Read more

News Brief

May 1, 2003

On March 5, the province of Quebec adopted North America’s most stringent restrictions on the use of pesticides. The new Pesticide Management Code immediately prohibits the use of the most harmful insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides on public, semipublic, and municipal green spaces except golf courses. By April 2006, this prohibition will... Read more

Op-Ed

May 1, 2003
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