Dining out just got greener, thanks to Green Seal’s new GS-46 Environmental Standard for Restaurants and Foodservices, the first standard of its kind. The first Green Seal specification to be approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), GS-46 addresses the environmental impacts of food, energy and water use, and supplies in the... Read more

I just finished reading your excellent article "Designing for Adaptation" (see EBN Sept. 2009) and I want you to know that I think it is one of the best articles on the rationale for green building practices I have ever read. Thank you for this valuable resource. I have benefited from EBN immensely over the past few years and want you to know... Read more

EBN advisory board member, was the founding chairman of The American... Read more

EBN to take a deeper look at alternative insulation materials, particularly relating to their toxicity and life-cycle impacts.

Research by the Green Science Policy... Read more

A suburb of the nation’s capital, Alexandria, Virginia, started to outgrow its high school several years ago, leading the school board to decide that a replacement for T.C. Williams High School was needed. The new LEED Gold high school, designed by Moseley Architects, was built on the same property as the old one, which was demolished after the... Read more

A second public comment period for the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) treatment of forest certification in the LEED Rating System is open until October 14, 2009. At issue is a collection of criteria that USGBC will use to evaluate forest certification programs to gain recognition in LEED. The first public comment period (see EBN Sept.... Read more

Sustainability is the ability to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” – Brundtland Commission

“In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation, even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine.” – Iroquois law

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Mineral wool forms naturally when strong winds blow through molten lava to create the thin, gold-colored strands that volcanologists call Pele’s hair. Today’s mineral wool insulation is made in a less dramatic process using basalt and iron-ore slag that is melted, spun into fibers, and held together with a phenolic resin. Adjusting the density... Read more

Architectural testing concern HTL will be at GlassBuild America shooting missiles at windows again. The demonstration/demolition follows the Miami-Dade large missile protocol by shooting 2x4s at impact-resistant and non-impact-resistant windows. A press release from HTL quotes NGA Industry Events Director Susan Jacob: "There is nothing quite... Read more

Let me get right to the point: unvented gas (and kerosene) space heaters and fireplaces are a bad idea. Don't install one.

Euphemistically called "... Read more

Energy-efficiency advocates fighting profligate energy use to overcool workplaces in summer and overheat them in winter now have a compelling new argument: people are healthier in spaces that are less severely conditioned. That is the finding of a peer-reviewed study by Mark Mendell, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, entitled “Indoor... Read more

Last week I described some observations about transportation from a trip I took to Sweden two years ago. While there, I toured two state-of-the-art, wood-chip-fired, combined heat and power (CHP) plants, one in... Read more

With its rustic stone facades and vaulted roof supported by glue-laminated beams, Kroon Hall, the new home for Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, looks a bit like an elegant rendition of a New England barn. But the reference wasn’t intentional, insist its architects, London-based Hopkins with the Connecticut firm... Read more

A lot of people have been working for a long time to try to head off global warming — and some progress... Read more

I had the great fortune two years ago to spend a couple weeks in Sweden. In late December 2007 I was visiting my daughter, who was studying at Lund... Read more