Choosing an environmentally friendly siding material has never been easy. Often the more “natural” products, such as wood clapboards, are associated with depletion of sensitive forest resources, while materials that are highly manufactured—such as vinyl—raise questions about chlorine and petrochemicals as... Read more

The DuPont Benedictus Awards for Innovation in Architectural Laminated Glass may have a significant environmental flavor in 1996 with the inclusion of two prominent “green” architects on the jury. Bob Berkebile of BNIM Architects in Kansas City, Missouri and Randolph Croxton, Croxton Collaborative Architects, New York City, have both been... Read more

I very much appreciate your recognition of the need for and efforts to identify priorities for “green building” (whatever that is). Such priorities can either be defined implicitly by the buildings a “green designer” creates or by some systematic process based on a hierarchy of environmental problems. Your... Read more

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Voluntary certification of product environmental claims is a useful option, but it does little to prevent bogus claims by other manufacturers. A 1990 California law attempts to address this problem by establishing legal definitions for the terms “ozone friendly,” “biodegradable,” “photodegradable,” “recyclable,” and “recycled.” Companies are... Read more

A few years ago, construction waste management and job-site source separation would have been considered nearly synonymous. It makes sense, after all, that if the materials have more value when separated by type, we should try to avoid mixing them together in the first place. While source separation still makes sense for many jobs and for... Read more

For years polystyrene has been just about the only game in town for exterior foundation insulation. The problem is that

extruded polystyrene—the type of polystyrene most commonly used on foundations—is produced with HCFCs that deplete ozone, and

all polystyrene (both extruded and... Read more

published by Thousand Words, P.O. Box 9034, Berkeley, CA 94709; 510/883-0433, otg@ontheground.com (e-mail). $32 per year for four issues. Length varies: 32-36 pages.

On the Ground is a large-format, quarterly journal on community, landscape design, and the environment that premiered in the Fall of... Read more

Environmental Committee, Denver Chapter, AIA, and Colorado Chapter, ADPSR. 1995. Loose-leaf (without binder) or diskette (PC or Macintosh), $29.95. Order from: AIA Denver/SDRG, 1562 15th Street, Denver, CO, 80202; 303/446-2266, 303/446-0066 (fax).

Greatly improved from last year’s first edition, this... Read more

A major shake-up at Louisiana-Pacific Corporation this summer was brought on, in part, by allegations of falsifying pollution emission data. The entire upper management team of L-P, including Chairman and President Harry Merlo (who led the company since its split from Georgia-Pacific in 1973 and who championed L-P’s leadership role in the move... Read more

We first learned about Icynene at the First Annual Conference on Alternatives to CFCs and Halons in November 1990. At that time it was a tiny Canadian company (founded in 1986) with a type of foam insulation that had no harmful effects on the Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer. Company founder... Read more

Two project are underway that may eventually provide useful environmental and cost information on building material alternatives to architects, specifiers, and others in the construction industry. A Canadian project, called

Athena™, is the outgrowth of government-sponsored work coordinated by Forintek... Read more

More recently, suburban neighborhoods and office parks began replacing farms in ever-widening circles around the cities and towns. Conventional practice is to landscape the open spaces around... Read more

Members of the U.S. Green Building Council have organized a non-profit Green Building Fund in the hopes of providing ongoing support for research and demonstration of environmentally sound construction projects. So far six organizations have contributed to the Fund’s initial project—a feasibility study documenting funding sources for green... Read more

Judith Kincaid, Cheryl Walker, and Greg Flynn for the Triangle J Council of Governments, PO Box 12276, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709; 919/549-0551, 919/549-9390 (fax). July 1995. Three-ring binder and diskette, 115 pages, $20 (specify diskette type when ordering).

Architects and specifiers who have... Read more

Efforts to establish a National Institute for the Environment (NIE) are proceeding in Washington, and they may even pick up speed as a way to consolidate environmental research efforts that are being handled through many different agencies. A bill to establish the Institute is expected to be introduced in... Read more

A new “Mini Home Study Course” from the International Institute for Bau-biologie and Ecology™ (IBE) in Clearwater, Florida is designed to help the home-dweller understand, find, and remedy indoor air pollution, water pollution, and other home health hazards. Participants receive resource material, a video, and a Gauss meter. Contact IBE at 813/... Read more

Learning from the Past

Easter Island has long mystified archaeologists. When the tiny, remote island, 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the nearest continent, was “discovered” on Easter day in 1722, some 200 mammoth stone statues (moai) stood on the island like sentries. But there was no obvious means by which the islanders could... Read more

Researchers at the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are looking into the idea of producing perlite using concentrated solar energy. Perlite is a natural volcanic rock that is expanded by rapid heating to between 870° and 1100°C. It is used as an insulation material and as a lightweight... Read more

Fluorescent lighting was introduced in the 1920s as a more energy-efficient alternative to incandescent lighting. Over the past two decades, technology improvements have gradually increased the acceptability of fluorescent lamps for many more applications. Light quality was dramatically improved with triphosphor... Read more