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The International Code Council (ICC) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) have agreed to create a green building educational manual for code... Read more

Just as President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal led America out of the Great Depression in our grandparent’s day, a dramatic set of initiatives will be required if we are to prevent the Great Warming. Many have argued for something akin to the Apollo Project to carry out the research and development needed to advance low-cost renewable energy... Read more

In passing the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act, Congress required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to test pesticides for disruption of the human endocrine system, which produces and regulates hormones. After years of delays, EPA announced in June 2007 that it would test 73 pesticides that people commonly encounter in homes and... Read more

On May 4, 2007, the U.S. Green Building Council expanded a previous ruling regarding Cradle to Cradle (C2C) certification (see

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Vol. 16, No. 5) by endorsing a LEED innovation point proposal from two related certification programs: the SMART Building Product Standard and the California Gold Carpet Standard. As with C2C, these... Read more

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The Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH), a program administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has... Read more

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Those who remember the 1970s houses with two parallel exterior walls and an airspace between them circulating solar heat around the house may be doing... Read more

At its annual convention in Baltimore, Maryland, in June 2007, the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) announced its forthcoming GreenFormat product data-reporting tool. GreenFormat is a Web-based questionnaire and product listing service that manufacturers can use to report on environmental aspects of their products. BuildingGreen, Inc... Read more

For the second time, the Holcim Awards, sponsored by the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction, are open to entries (see

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Vol. 15, No. 8). The awards recognize projects that meet housing and infrastructure needs without harming future generations. Projects are eligible for the competition if construction had not... Read more

One can hardly pick up a magazine or turn on the television today without hearing something about climate change. The issue finally appears to be gaining traction in our nation’s collective consciousness. Much of the focus of reducing greenhouse gas emissions rightly centers on how we design and construct buildings. Indeed, the 2030... Read more

The term "volatile organic compound" (VOC) means different things to different people. In high school or college chemistry class we learned that VOCs are a class of carbon-based compounds that readily become volatile (gaseous) under ordinary (atmospheric) conditions. Thus, we learned that VOCs are any of those carbon-based compounds that smell... Read more

The American Institute of Architects, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Architecture 2030, Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, and U.S. Green Building Council have reached an agreement setting a baseline for the goals of the 2030 Challenge, which calls for an immediate 50% reduction in... Read more

Emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other... Read more

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) has released the first public comment draft of its “Proposed Standard 189, Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings.” This standard, being developed in conjunction with the Illuminating Engineering... Read more

Nuclear power is increasingly being touted as a leading solution to global climate change. Nuclear energy proponents—and a growing number of environmentalists—correctly point out that nuclear fission, the heat source in nuclear power plants, does not emit greenhouse gases. Given the clear need to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions, nuclear... Read more

New European Union (EU) regulations of harmful chemicals have been toned down and made law. The final version of the Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) bill requires that persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT), and very persistent, very bioaccumulative (vPvB) chemicals manufactured in or imported into the EU... Read more

Following a successful nine-month pilot program, a mercury-thermostat recycling program is being rolled out nationwide. Created by the independent nonprofit Product Stewardship Institute and the industry-owned nonprofit Thermostat Recycling Corporation, the program works with municipal hazardous waste collection programs to collect thermostats... Read more