Inno-Therm Products, LLC has purchased the equipment and technology for manufacturing batt insulation of recycled cotton fabric from Greenwood Cotton Insulation Products, which ceased production of the insulation in 1997 (see EBN

Vol. 7, No. 2, page 10). Inno-Therm expects to begin commercial production of the insulation by March of... Read more

by John Bower, 2000. The Healthy House Institute. Paperback, 416 pages, $21.95

The Healthy House video series described above. Bower has by now published a handful of titles on healthy houses, and each is better than the last. This book is no exception—well organized,... Read more

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

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) was created in the early 1990s to establish worldwide, environmentally sound standards for forest management practices and to monitor the agencies that choose to certify forestry programs to those standards (see EBN

Vol. 6, No. 10). Although some forest industry groups participated in the FSC’s... 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

I’d like to offer a minor correction to your otherwise excellent article “Structural Engineered Wood: Is it Green?” (EBN

Vol. 8, No. 11). You stated that interior-grade softwood plywood uses a urea-formaldehyde (UF) binder. While that was once the case, all construction-grade plywood (both interior- and exterior-grade) now uses a phenol... 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

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

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

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

Rebuild America has announced its

1999 National Energy Champion Award winners. Among the twelve winners are:

Portland Partners for Energy Efficiency program of the Portland Energy Office, represented by senior energy program manager Curt Nichols;

•Partnership Leader of the Year:

Hilary... Read more

Every once and a while, when I’m able to step back from the immediate pressures of keeping up with the next deadline, I reflect on the bigger picture of what we’re collectively doing—at

EBN and elsewhere—to advance sustainability. I’m troubled by a paradox: the more successful we are at advancing resource... 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

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

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

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