Hurricane Katrina and a long list of other natural disasters over the years—from the Northeast’s Blizzard of 1978 that killed 17 people and left tens of thousands of people without heat and water, to the Chicago heat wave that killed more than 700 people during a one-week period in 1995, to the January 1998 ice storm in Eastern Canada that... Read more

Sustainable Hotel Siting, Design, and Construction

, published by Conservation International and the International Business Leaders Forum, is intended to help the travel and leisure industry build more environmentally friendly hotels. The book was produced with the support of nine of the world’s leading hotel chains, including Hilton,... Read more

BuildingGreen, Inc., publisher of the GreenSpec®Directory and Environmental Building News™, announced the fourth annual Top-10 Green Building Products during the U.S. Green Building Council’s Greenbuild Conference and Expo in November. The Top-10 represent the most exciting products added to GreenSpec in the past year. A press release about... Read more

A September 2005 report from New Ecology, Inc., and Tellus Institute demonstrates that green affordable housing is more cost-effective than conventional affordable housing. The report,

Costs and Benefits of Green Affordable Housing, features case studies of 16 green affordable housing projects around the country and lays out the long-... Read more

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) is inviting submissions for the 2006 National Green Building Awards, to be presented at the National Green Building Conference, March 12-14, 2006, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Entries are due December 23, 2005. For details, visit www.nahb.org/greenbuildingawards.

The International Code Council (ICC), an organization focused on building safety and fire prevention, disappointed the green building community when it voted in late September 2005 not to adopt member-ratified changes to the 2004 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) that would have strengthened standards for wall insulation. The... Read more

DuPont and Tate & Lyle have begun construction on a $100 million plant in Loudon, Tennessee, that will convert corn into 1,3 propanediol (PDO). The product, also known as Bio-PDO™, will replace petroleum-based PDO in the production of Sonora®, DuPont’s newest polymer, used in clothing, carpeting, plastics, and other products. The production... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council, along with the Enterprise Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, the Trust for Public Land, and others, is planning a series of charrettes focused on rebuilding the Gulf Coast. The meetings will be held during the Greenbuild Conference, to take place in Atlanta November 9-11, 2005. Scholarships will allow 30 Gulf... Read more

Wonderful Houses Around the Worldby Yoshio Komatsu, Shelter Publications, Bolinas, California, 2004. Flexcover or softcover, 48 pages, $14.95/$8.95.

The Fusiotherm® and Faser® lines of polypropylene pipe and pipe fittings made by Aquatherm Piping Systems, LLC, were awarded ESR 1613 listing by the International Code Council (ICC) in September 2005. This listing, according to Aquatherm’s Jim Brock, certifies that Aquatherm pipe and fittings meet all of the relevant plumbing codes. The... Read more

In what it describes as the most ambitious energy conservation campaign in U.S. history, the California Public Utilities Commission in September 2005 authorized $2 billion in funding over the next three years for energy efficiency and conservation. The program’s provisions include financing strategies, online energy audits, and consumer rebates... Read more

A 13.6 million acre (5.5 million ha) forest in Alberta, Canada, managed by Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries, Inc. (Al-Pac), has earned certification according to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards, making it the largest FSC-certified forest in the world. The announcement also makes Canada the leading country in the world for FSC-... Read more

Waterless Co., LLC, manufacturer of No-Flush™ urinals (see

EBN

Vol. 7, No. 2), is offering $500,000 in discounts on its urinals to building owners, schools, colleges, cities, counties, state agencies, the military, and other facilities in areas affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. For more information, visit www.waterless.... Read more

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has signed into law a bill establishing green building standards for certain capital projects. The law, Int. 324-A, requires most new and renovated City buildings that cost more than $2 million to “be built according to green building standards that are as stringent as LEED,” according to an Office of... Read more

GeoPraxis®, Inc., a company that provides architectural, engineering, and construction software and services, has become Green Building Studio, Inc., taking on the name of the company’s online energy-analysis service. The firm’s utility and real-estate consulting business, including the online EnergyCheckup™ tool, meanwhile, has spun off but... Read more

The Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) has expanded its Green Label Plus program, released in 2004 to recognize carpets with low emissions of indoor pollutants, to include adhesives. Green Label Plus supersedes the organization’s older “Green Label” program, which addressed carpets, carpet pads, and adhesives. Before receiving Green Label Plus... Read more

The National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), the world’s leading organization representing commercial real estate executives, has awarded its first Green Development Award to Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT) for a 125,000 ft2 (11,600 m2) office building in Annapolis Junction, Maryland. The award was developed in... Read more

Advisory Board member Russell Perry, AIA, is now at SmithGroup’s Washington, D.C., office, after 11 years with William McDonough+Partners (WM+P). While at WM+P, Perry was project leader for several high-profile, aggressively green projects, including Ford’s River Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan, and the National Collections Centre at... Read more