Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, 55 Murray Street, Suite 330, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 4M3, Canada; 613/241-3600, 613/241-5750 (fax). Published bimonthly, 20 pages per issue, $79 per year (Canadian dollars in Canada, U.S. dollars in the U.S.), $59 for Green Building Information Council members.

Hemp,

Cannabis sativa, can be grown again in Germany with the recent lifting of a ban on hemp cultivation. Germany will join other European countries that cultivate hemp as a quality fiber source, which can reduce demand for forest products. A fiber-cement building block using hemp is already being produced in France. The states of... Read more

Builders and designers committed to energy- and resource-efficient construction strategies have long struggled with building codes that mandate conventional practice, even when alternatives might be more sensible. A new addition to the Lake County, Illinois building code offers one solution to this problem—in a complete, take-it-or-leave-it... Read more

40 pages; $8.00 postpaid from the Center for Resourceful Building Technology, P.O. Box 100, Missoula, MT 59806; 406/549-7678.

A group of evangelical Christians is urging support of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), according to a January 31 article in

The New York Times. Dr. Calvin DeWitt, who helped found the Evangelical Environmental Network, said in the article that the Endangered Species Act is “the Noah’s Ark of our day” and that “Congress and special... Read more

Thank you for the review you gave WWPA’s

Eco-Profile of Lumber Produced in the Western United States: Life Cycle Inventory of WWPA Western Lumber. Your comments on the study were both thorough and fair.

Two small stands within a government-managed forestry operation in central British Columbia were certified in November 1995 by the Silva Forest Foundation. The 25- to 30-hectare (60- to 75-acre) stands in the Vernon Forest District are part of a larger area run by the Ministry of Forests Small Business Programme, which is collecting and sorting... Read more

Cork has been used as a flooring material for more than one hundred years. Cork flooring is durable, it provides acoustical and thermal insulation, it cushions the foot, it is resistant to moisture damage and decay, it is fairly easy to clean, and it is harvested from trees in a sustainable manner. Though imported and thus energy-intensive to... Read more

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

by Scientific Certification Systems, Inc., August 1995. Published by Western Wood Products Association, Yeon Building, 522 SW Fifth Avenue, Portland, OR 97204-2122; 503/224-3930, 503/224-3934 (fax). Spiral bound, 28 pages (not including appendices), $125.

Americus, Georgia-based Habitat for Humanity International is well-known for its coordination of locally based affordable housing projects. Working largely with donated materials and volunteer labor, Habitat (with its many local affiliates) is now one of the nation’s twenty largest homebuilders. Minimizing environmental impact has not... Read more

On October 31st of last year, new fluorescent lamp standards took effect that eliminate some of the most widely used lamps in commercial buildings. Under the Energy Policy Act of 1992, the old standby T-12, cool-white, F40 lamp can no longer be manufactured or imported into the U.S. Lamps must now have a minimum color rendering index (CRI)—a... 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?

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

Submissions are being accepted until February 15 for the 1996 Quality Building Conference Design Competition. New to this year’s competition is an Unbuilt Projects/Proposals category. Contact JoAnn Lawrence at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA), 50 Miles Street, Greenfield, Massachusetts 01301, 413/774-6051, 413/774-6053 (fax... 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

transpired solar collector, Solarwall has initially been targeted... Read more

Real Goods has decided that it will no longer sponsor the National Tour of Independent Homes and is looking for another organization to take over the event. During its first three years, the Tour has been a big success, with 25,000 people having visited hundreds of homes and seeing first-hand the potential of renewables. Organizations... Read more

A bill to create the National Institute for the Environment (see

EBN

Vol. 4, No. 5) has finally been introduced in the current Congress by Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ) and twenty cosponsors. The Institute is widely supported by business leaders, scientists, and environmentalists.