Winners of the second Excellence in Sustainable Design and Development Awards were announced in October 2005 during the Integrated Design/Integrated Development (IDID) Conference, held in Crawford Notch, New Hampshire. The winners were the

NRG Systems Offices and Manufacturing Facility in Hinesburg, Vermont, designed by William Maclay... 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

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

California’s updated Title 24 building efficiency standards, approved by the California Energy Commission in late 2003 (see

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Vol. 13, No. 1), took effect on October 1, 2005. The strengthened standards include a range of changes for both residential and nonresidential buildings. Mandatory changes involve indoor and outdoor... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council has named Tom Hicks vice president of the LEED® Rating System. Hicks has served as director of LEED for Existing Buildings since November 2004 and before that spent nine years as principal architect and program manager of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star® commercial building rating system.... Read more

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

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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

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.

In balloting that closed on October 28, 2005, the membership of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) voted overwhelmingly to approve version 2.2 of USGBC’s flagship LEED® for New Construction (LEED-NC) rating system. While other versions of LEED have been released in the interim, this vote endorses the first substantive update of the NC... Read more

The Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability (MTS) is preparing to release its Sustainable/EPP Flooring Standard© for all hard-surface flooring, following a public meeting in Dallas, Texas, on November 1. MTS is also holding organizational meetings for two new standards it is seeking to develop: the Integrated Design Process... Read more

The Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, has announced the establishment of the Haworth Chair in Integrated Design, funded by Haworth, Inc., under the “Project

evolve” partnership with Direct Energy Business Services. The announcement did not specify whether the Haworth Chair holder will be... Read more

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

A prominent... Read more

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Vol. 13, No. 8 for winners of the first competition). All prototypes had to meet... 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

Cellulose insulation manufacturer U.S. GreenFiber, LLC, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, acquired Bonded Insulation, located in Hagman, New York, in July 2005. The acquisition will allow GreenFiber to expand its manufacturing and distribution presence in the Northeast and in eastern Canada. “GreenFiber has the capacity to turn what has... 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