Atlas Roofing Corporation, which in 1998 became the first polyisocyanurate insulation manufacturer to introduce an ozone-safe product (see

EBN

Vol. 7, No. 5), is still the only manufacturer to offer such a product. While most polyiso today is made with HCFC-141b, Atlas’s AC Ultra™ technology uses a mixture of hydrocarbons as the... Read more

It was great to hear from so many of you again—over 200 subscribers completed and returned our second reader survey this past fall. We pored over the returns, looking for trends, ways we can improve

EBN, and things not to change. It was particularly interesting to compare the current results with those from our first subscriber survey conducted... Read more

Nigel Howard

has accepted a position as Vice President of the U.S. Green Building Council, with primary responsibility for technical development and implementation of the LEED™ Green Building Rating System. Until November 2000, Howard was with the Building Research Establishment in the U.K., where he oversaw that organization’s influential... Read more

EPA Energy Star® has just refined its logos and their use. Most important, there is now only one certification mark for all labeled products, including homes. The growth of all the various Energy Star programs prompted this effort to

consolidate Energy Star brand awareness among consumers. In a recent letter to all partners, the manager of the... Read more

Jerelyn Wilson

(who is married to Alex) helped to launch

EBN and build our readership in the early ’90s. Now she has returned as Outreach Director and will be working on new ways to familiarize the building community with

EBN and our other products.

Among other tasks, she is contacting workshop presenters and conference... Read more

The architecture and engineering firm Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (HOK) was among the recipients of this year’s

Green Cross Award from Global Green USA and Green Cross International, the peace and environmental organization founded by Mikhail Gorbachev. Accepting the award for HOK from Mr. Gorbachev at the April 25, 2001 gala in New... Read more

While efforts by American industry to clean up its act have been well publicized in recent years, toxic releases appear to be on the increase. The quantity of

toxic chemicals emitted by U.S. industry grew by 5% in 1999, according to the annual Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A total of 7.7... Read more

There are quite a few insulated concrete form (ICF) systems on the market whose manufacturers make a variety of resource efficiency claims.

EBN came across an interesting newcomer, Tech Block, at this year’s Greenprints conference in Atlanta. Tech Block uses 100% recycled EPS in a cementitious matrix similar to the popular Rastra system... Read more

by Richard Pinkham. Rocky Mountain Institute, 2000. Spiral-bound, 64 pages. Available printed for $12 plus shipping from RMI, 1739 Snowmass Creek Rd., Snowmass, CO 81654; 970/927-3851; or available for free in PDF format from the RMI Web site:

www.rmi.org

The term “daylighting” is far more commonly used to refer to natural lighting,... Read more

One of Canada’s largest forest products companies, Tembec Inc., agreed in late January to work with World Wildlife Fund Canada (WWF) on certifying all of its forest operations according to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards. The company controls more than 13 million hectares (50,000 square miles) across the country, an area larger than the... Read more

Long-time green architects Rob Harrison of Harrison Architects and George Ostrow of Velocipede Architects feel pretty lucky when it comes to specifying and obtaining green building materials. “We are in a unique position here in Seattle.

We have the Environmental Home Center—almost an ‘Eco-Home Depot’—where our clients can see and actually... Read more

FPL Energy of Florida is building a

300-megawatt wind farm—the world’s largest—on the border of Oregon and Washington. The 450-turbine wind farm, which will produce enough power for approximately 70,000 homes, should be completed by the end of this year. Power from the Stateline Wind Generating Project will be sold throughout the West... Read more

I have read your article covering the SB2000 Conference in The Netherlands (

EBN

Vol. 10, No. 1), and the response from Nils Larsson, executive director of the International Institute for a Sustainable Built Environment (iiSBE) in the following issue. I appreciate Nils’ statement that iiSBE intends to cooperate with the World... Read more

U.S. dependence on foreign oil

during 2000 reached an all-time high at 57.0% total imports (up from 56.6% in 1998 and 55.6% in 1999), according to the February 2001 edition of

Monthly Energy Review, published by the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy (

www.eia.doe.gov). Net petroleum imports (... Read more

China is losing about 1,000 square miles (260,000 ha) to desert each year

, according to a story on MSNBC (January 20). More than a quarter of China is already desert, and sand dunes are now within 60 miles (96 km) of Beijing —and moving closer as quickly as 15 miles (24 km) per year! Last year many Beijing residents were hospitalized with... Read more

When the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) got involved with the design and construction of a building it was slated to lease as its Southcentral Regional Office Building (SCROB), DEP determined to make it a “Green Technology Model Project.”

With support from The Heinz Endowments, Alan Barak of the Penn Energy Project... Read more

The

Northeast Green Building Awards, sponsored by the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust, were announced at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s (NESEA) Building Energy 2001 conference in Medford, Massachusetts on March 23, 2001. Listed below are the First Prize winners in each of the professional categories. Other winning... Read more

Oregon’s controversial

Measure 7, which requires payments to landowners when state or local government regulations reduce property value, has been declared unconstitutional. An Oregon Circuit Court judge ruled in February that Ballot Measure 7 violates Oregon’s Constitution. This ruling is expected to be appealed, and the Oregon... Read more

The Energy Star® program, a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has named

Johnson Controls among its 2001 Award Winners. Recognized for its commitment to pollution prevention by improving the energy performance of buildings throughout the U.S., the company provides building control... Read more

The Maine Hospital Association, in partnership with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the Natural Resources Council of Maine, just signed an agreement to voluntarily eliminate the use of most mercury-containing supplies and medical equipment, as well as continuously reduce the use of

plastics containing PVC. The... Read more