The Home Builders Association of Kitsap County, Washington

has introduced the “Build a Better Kitsap” program to recognize homes built to high environmental standards. Working with consultant Kathleen O’Brien, the Builders can select from a list of 85 options to achieve a one-, two-, or three-star rating. This is the second such program... Read more

There are some important benefits of treating wood, the most significant of which is increasing the life of wood that is used in locations where degradation might occur. Older preservatives, such as pentachlorophenal and creosote, pose considerable health risks to users of the wood, but new waterborne preservatives are safer. They are safer in... Read more

Awards and Competitions

The Alameda County Waste Management Authority in California has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for the creation of a portable

Resourceful Building Showcase. The Showcase, to be displayed at conferences and trade shows, must be made with recycled-content, reused, recyclable, and nontoxic building materials.... Read more

Hi-Rise Recycling, Inc. makes electronically controlled systems that allow apartment dwellers and office workers to separate out recyclable materials using a single disposal chute. Since we reviewed the product in

EBN

Vol. 2, No. 5, the company has been expanding, both in market share and vertical integration within their product area.... Read more

As an experiment in environmental living, the Center for Regenerative Studies seeks not to sustain the current condition of the land, but to enhance it. John Tillman Lyle, professor of landscape architecture at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, was the main visionary and driving force behind this project. Much of the theory on... Read more

Given the alarming situation that has arisen with disposal of CCA-treated wood over the past two decades (see page 1), the editors of

Environmental Building News are taking the unusual step of proposing a phase-out of this product. This recommendation is driven not by the toxicity of CCA-treated wood in use, but by concerns relating to... Read more

by Peter Yost and Eric Lund (1997).

NAHB Research Center, 400 Prince George’s Blvd., Upper Marlboro, MD 20774; 301/249-4000, www.nahbrc.com. Paperback, 30 pages, free of charge.

The task of job-site waste management just got easier. This concise guide from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Research Center fills a big... Read more

Gridcore Systems International, the Long Beach, California manufacturer of 100% post-consumer recycled-fiber waffle-core panels, is keeping busy! The company recently expanded manufacturing facilities and now has the capacity to produce over 6.5 million square feet (600,000 m2) of nominal 3⁄4 ” (19 mm) panel per year. Expansion was made possible... Read more

by Wesley A. Groesbeck and Jan Striefel, ASLA. Environmental Resources, Inc., 2041 E. Hollywood Avenue, Salt Lake City, UT 84108-3148; 801/485-0280. Paperback, 486 pages, $35 postpaid.

This directory is a bare-bones, no-frills production. The 2,100 listings are printed in a plain database output format on recycled newsprint. But the content... Read more

Newsbriefs

Forintek Canada Corp.’s Sustainable Materials Pro-ject, a leading source of life-cycle information on building materials, has just been incorporated as the not-for-profit

Athena Sustainable Materials Institute (ASMI). The Institute should help address perceptions that the life-cycle data from the project is biased by its... Read more

The third annual

International Design Resource Awards for recycled and renewable materials and products includes categories for “Built Environments” and “Building Materials” along with five others. Winning this competition is reportedly a great way to find a manufacturer for your design. Entry fee is $30; deadline for submissions is... Read more

Last fall,

EBN had an opportunity to try out the new straw-based particleboard made by PrimeBoard, Inc. in Wahpeton, North Dakota. We hired a local cabinetry firm to shop-fabricate and install a wall of modular shelving from several 5’ x 10’ (1.5 x 3 m) sheets of 3⁄4”-thick (19 mm) WheatBoard™. We wanted to find out from professional... Read more

edited by Joe Demkin, AIA (1997). Published by John Wiley & Sons, New York. Three-ring binder, 350 pages in supplement, $75. The entire Guide is available for $195. To order direct call 800/225-5945.

The 1997 supplement to the

Environmental Resource Guide

(ERG) from The American Institute of Architects expands on the utility... Read more

An innovative

employee-satisfaction-based compensation contract for a new $40 million, 165 million square-foot (15 million m2) Ciba Geigy laboratory in Tarrytown, New York proved successful for the architecture and construction firms that risked part of their profits. Designers HLW International and contractor Sordoni Skanska agreed to... Read more

The Ecology

of Architecture:

by Laura C. Zeiher. 1996, Whitney Library of Design (an imprint of Watson-Guptill Publications), New York. Hardcover, 270 pages, $55.

The Ecology of Architecture is a very broad work, including background theory on ecological design, profiles of practitioners, and detailed case studies of green... Read more

Thinner Studs Save Wood

As softwood lumber prices continue their wild price gyrations, including a new peak high late last year, pressure to improve the efficiency of wood use is increasing. One solution might be to reduce the thickness of framing lumber.

An Idaho sawmill began producing 11⁄4”-thick (32 mm) 2x4 and 2x6 studs two years... Read more

Dewees Island: More Than Just a Green Development

Most people involved with environmentally responsible development have probably heard about Dewees Island somewhere along the line.

After all, the project has been featured in dozens of mainstream publications and a half-dozen books. John Knott, the visionary C.E.O. of Island... Read more

No More Recycled-content Extruded Polystyrene Insulation

Plastics recycling suffered many setbacks in 1996, not the least of which was the demise of Amoco’s 50%-recycled extruded polystyrene (XPS) insulation. The original Amofoam-RCY™, introduced in December 1991, has been officially discontinued. The newer Amofoam-RCX™, which is available in... Read more

New Bath Fan/light Combo from Panasonic

Panasonic Home and Building Products, which led the pack in production of truly quiet spot ventilators (see

EBN

Vol. 5, No. 5), has just introduced a line of fans combined with compact fluorescent lights.

The new WhisperLite series of 70-, 90-, and 110-cfm (33, 42, and 52 l/s) are... Read more

International Effort to Standardize Materials Data

Three new committees have been established within the France-based International Union of Testing and Research Laboratories for Materials and Structures (RILEM). Together with one committee established previously, these three aim to assess international standards for reporting on environmental... Read more