The Aamjiwnaang First Nation near Sarnia, Ontario is experiencing an increasingly

skewed ratio of female to male births, according to a July 31 article in the

Globe and Mail. Until recently, the community tracked normally, but in 1994, the ratio suddenly shifted and has been heavily skewed toward females ever since. In 2003, the... Read more

The Slag Cement Association has recognized two projects for replacing energy-intensive portland cement with blast-furnace-slag cement, an industrial waste byproduct from the reduction of iron ore to iron (see EBN

Vol. 8, No. 6).

Clearview Elementary School in Hanover, Pennsylvania (see

EBN

Vol. 11, No. 11 or... Read more

Ills caused by global climate change range from increased frequency of asthma and heat stroke to more intense storms and species extinction. While environmentalists go far past calling the phenomenon a “nuisance,” they are applauding eight states and one city for doing just that. The attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Iowa, New... Read more

Several regions of the country are experiencing a

shortage of portland cement, the key ingredient in concrete. According to the Portland Cement Association (PCA), among the chief causes for this shortage are increased demand in the residential sector and limited availability of ships to carry imported cement, which in turn is blamed... Read more

, president of the nonprofit Trust for Sustainable Development and founder of the Villages of Loreto Bay in Baja California Sur, has been given the

Good Neighbor Award by the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit bilateral coalition of businesspeople working to promote trade, investment, and joint ventures on... Read more

At the June 2004 American Institute of Architects (AIA) national convention in Chicago, the Portland Cement Association (PCA) rolled out a sustainability initiative, “Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World.” Part of PCA’s Cement Manufacturing Sustainability Program, the initiative will help the industry develop sustainability guidelines,... Read more

Chicago Bungalow, constructed by the tens of thousands in the early 1900s to house the city’s working class. Bungalow owners can now take advantage of matching grants from the Chicago Department of Environment for up to $2,000 toward improvements in windows, doors, and insulation,... Read more

The Natural Resources Defense Council

Robert Redford Building in Santa Monica, California has won a

Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). The building, designed by Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists, simultaneously addresses green building and New Urbanist concerns (see

EBN

Vol... Read more

, warns an article in the July 2004 issue of the

Journal of Light Construction (JLC). According to Kevin Hansen, who recently investigated abandoned tannery sites in the Wilmington, Delaware region for Tetra Tech, Inc., the leather-making industry used to soak animal hides in a slurry of lime and arsenic... Read more

Seattle’s

Environmental Home Center (EHC), profiled in “Getting the ‘Right Stuff’: A Guide to Green Building Materials Retailers” (EBN

Vol. 10, No. 4), lost its main warehouse, showroom, and offices to a fire on August 11, 2004. Two warehouses remain standing, however, and the company has laid out an aggressive recovery plan in... 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

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

There’s a lot of pavement in the United States—nearly 38,000 square miles (9.9 Million ha) or an area about the size of Indiana, according to calculations EBN has done (Vol. 5, No. 1). The vast majority of this is impermeable surface that contributes to stormwater runoff. In certain applications, that pavement can be made porous so that the... Read more

University of Manitoba interior design students

Tamara Nyysola and

Corina Penner have won the first-ever

GreenInteriors Student Design Competition. Dow BioProducts, Inc. and

Interior Design magazine sponsored the first annual competition, which drew 55 entries from 14 design schools across North America. The... Read more

There’s a new option for potable-water, hydronic-heating, and other pressurized piping applications: polypropylene from the German company Aquatherm, GmbH. Aquatherm has been producing high-quality Fusiotherm® polypropylene (PP) piping for 30 years with tremendous success—never having paid a claim for damage due to failure of the piping,... Read more

A new report by Lisa Fay Matthiessen and Peter Morris of Davis Langdon Adamson (DLA) offers compelling evidence that if there is any premium associated with building green, it is far less significant than a range of other factors that affect building cost. The paper, “Costing Green: A Comprehensive Cost Database and Budgeting Methodology,”... Read more

As part of its recently adopted

Green Building Strategy, the Vancouver, British Columbia city council approved a requirement that every new civic building larger than 500 m2 (5,000 ft2) achieve a Gold rating in the recently released LEED for British Columbia (see

EBN

Vol. 13, No. 5).

I found your recent feature article on flame retardants [

Vol. 13, No. 6] to be very enlightening. You have written it with your usual thoroughness. That’s why I subscribe to

EBN and why I tell my students to subscribe. I find so much of what you report to be valuable for clients and students.

[Sometimes] I assess houses... Read more

On July 8, 2004 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is taking an “administrative action” against DuPont for withholding information the company had as far back as 1981 about risks from its use and disposal of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA—also referred to as C8) at its Washington Works factory in Washington, West... Read more