The City Design Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago is seeking entries for Design Matters, an Internet catalog of

affordable housing projects built since 1985 that demonstrate high quality and value to their occupants and to society at large. Projects will be selected by the Center and its nationwide advisory team based on a... Read more

More than half of the

world’s rivers are either going dry or are polluted, according to the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century. During 1998, for the first time ever, more people were displaced for want of useable water (“environmental refugees”) than those displaced by war: 25 million vs. 21 million war-related... Read more

by David Johnston, 2000. Home Builder Press, Washington, D.C. Paperback, 175 pages, $45

Innovations in Wallcoverings, Inc., a 25-year-old manufacturer of vinyl wallcoverings and upholstery,... Read more

A survey of

comments from key players in the IAQ industry published in the January 2000 issue of

IEQ Strategies reveals some interesting trends. Asthma, especially in children, is seen as an increasingly important health issue related to IAQ. Overall, the importance of VOCs and tobacco smoke as air quality issues is declining,... Read more

In the next few months the U.S. Department of Energy is expected to issue a long overdue energy efficiency standard for fluorescent lamp ballasts. This new standard is the result of a negotiated agreement between energy conservation interests, ballast manufacturers, and other stakeholders. According to this Joint Agreement, the new standard... Read more

In other

green power news, the city of Palmdale, California has announced that it is following Santa Monica’s lead (see EBN

Vol. 8, No. 6, p. 3) in purchasing its municipal power from renewable sources. Green electricity will be purchased from Commonwealth Energy Corporation in Tustin, California.

, LLC, which provided consulting and marketing services for green building in the commercial and hospitality sectors and operated a showroom for green products on Wall Street in New York City, has ceased operations. At press time, details about the reasons for the closure and possible future plans were unavailable.... Read more

was declared the most popular home product of 1999 by

American Homestyle & Gardening magazine’s Reader’s Choice Awards. Trex is a composite of recycled polyethylene and wood fibers (see EBN

Vol. 2, No. 2).

AllGreen® MDF, a new medium-density fiberboard (MDF) product made from 100% post-consumer wood fiber and phenol-formaldehyde binders, is nearing production by The CanFibre Group Ltd. The company’s new Riverside, California plant is continuing to fine tune its production process to improve face characteristics of its standard MDF board. CanFibre... Read more

energy performance reporting for windows. Most recently, the Council has determined that, as of January 2000, participating manufacturers will be required to certify solar heat gain coefficient and visible light transmittance... Read more

My family couldn’t disagree more with the comment you received about the quality of light from tubular skylights [see feature in EBN

Vol. 8, No. 10, and letter in EBN

Vol. 8, No. 11]. We had two Solatubes installed last month: one in a fairly dark kitchen, and the other in an interior windowless bathroom. They passed both the “... Read more

by John and Lynn Bower, 2000. The Healthy House Institute, 430 North Sewell Road, Bloomington, IN 47408; 812/332-5073,

www.hhinst.com. Five-video set, $99.95

According to an article in the January 4 edition of the

New York Times, the

backyard burning of household trash may release more dioxins and furans into the atmosphere than are released by all of the nation’s municipal incinerators. An estimated 20 million people in the U.S. burn their trash in uncontrolled backyard incinerators... Read more

Neil Kelly Cabinets’ Naturals Collection (see EBN Vol. 7, No. 8) received the 1999 Founder of the New Northwest award from Sustainable Northwest, an organization working to promote economic development that is rooted in the maintenance and enhancement of the environment. Visit www.sustainablenorthwest.org for details, or contact Neil Kelly at... Read more

The average overall

automobile fuel economy in the United States has dropped to its lowest level in nearly 20 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. When light trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) are included in the statistics, the fleetwide fuel economy for 1999 model vehicles averages 23.8 miles per gallon... Read more

Version 2.0 of the BEES software tool (for “Building Environmental and Economic Sustainability”), a building materials analysis program developed by the U.S. government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is due out in late Spring of 2000. (See

EBN

Vol. 7, No. 5 for a... Read more

or Concrete

Asphalt and concrete account for the vast majority of paving today. These materials are very different: asphalt is a mix of aggregate and leftover heavy hydrocarbons after more valuable, lighter fractions of crude oil have been extracted; concrete is a hardened, rock-like material usually made by... Read more

The

1999 American Society of Landscape Architects Awards reflect the strong ecological awareness of the jury. Among the projects receiving top honors were:

•The

James Rose Center of Landscape Architectural Research and Design, a former residence converted into a nonprofit foundation in Ridgewood, New Jersey by... Read more

Scientists at Spectrolab, a division of Hughes Electronics Corp., and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have achieved a

new efficiency record for photovoltaic cells, converting 32.3% of the sun’s energy into electricity. The record was achieved with triple-junction gallium-indium-phosphide on gallium arsenide on germanium using a... Read more