Environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) is often tagged as a solution to many technical shortcomings of LEED®. On September 29, 2004, with support from Wayne Trusty, President of the Athena™ Sustainable Materials Institute, USGBC convened a meeting of industry groups and LCA database and tool developers to establish a plan for incorporating... Read more

U.S. Green Building Council membership reached 5,000 on September 2, when Ro-Bar Technical Services, LLC of Boise, Idaho joined the organization. Membership had reached 4,000 in February 2004 (see EBN

Vol. 13, No. 3).

I wanted to tell you that my ease in passing the LEED® Accredited Professional test is in large part due to my loyal reading of your newsletter for the last several years. Thanks for your excellent coverage of green issues.

Sarah Nettleton, AIA

Sarah Nettleton Architects

Minneapolis, MN

Editors’ Response: Reading... Read more

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has updated its Construction Waste Management Database, housed on the Whole Building Design Guide Web site, to help reduce the amount of construction and demolition waste going to incinerators and landfills. Waste haulers, processors, and recyclers are also encouraged to advertise on the Web site.... Read more

Sixteen hundred new San Francisco homes will be built to save energy, lowering expenses for their low-income owners, according to a memorandum of understanding between the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and developer Lennar/BVHP, LLC. The homes will be built on a 78-acre (32 ha) plot of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, which the U.S... Read more

College Publishing of Glen Allen, Virginia has announced that the inaugural edition of the

Journal of Green Building will be published in Spring 2005. The peer-reviewed, technical journal will “provide a high-quality, interdisciplinary forum for advancing the state of knowledge about green building and high performance, sustainable... Read more

Virtually all of the chemicals used in pressure-treated wood—CCA (chromated copper arsenate), ACQ (ammonium copper quaternary), copper azole, and even borates—are formulated to do one thing: kill organisms that decay or eat wood. It stands to reason that chemicals selected for their toxicity might also affect humans and ecosystems. Most uses of... Read more

Following six years of development, MechoShade Systems, Inc., the shade screen industry leader, has introduced a new product aimed directly at the green market. Their PVC-free EcoVeil™—made of a new thermoplastic olefin (TPO) yarn called EarthTex™, developed by MechoShade’s textile partner, the Twitchell™ Corporation—is the first solar shade... Read more

, warns an article in the July 2004 issue of the

Journal of Light Construction (JLC). According to Kevin Hansen, who recently investigated abandoned tannery sites in the Wilmington, Delaware region for Tetra Tech, Inc., the leather-making industry used to soak animal hides in a slurry of lime and arsenic... Read more

On July 8, 2004, the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) imposed a moratorium on the issuance of building permits in Middletown, a community of 3,000 just west of Frederick. The cause of this action was concern that the town’s water supply is inadequate to satisfy both existing and proposed development.

This is the second time... Read more

Seattle’s

Environmental Home Center (EHC), profiled in “Getting the ‘Right Stuff’: A Guide to Green Building Materials Retailers” (EBN

Vol. 10, No. 4), lost its main warehouse, showroom, and offices to a fire on August 11, 2004. Two warehouses remain standing, however, and the company has laid out an aggressive recovery plan in... Read more

Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet by Vijay Vaitheeswaran; Farrar,... Read more

2004 Energy Efficiency Integration Awards: the

Cesar E. Chavez Education Center in Oakland, the

Challengers Tennis Club for Boys and Girls in Los Angeles, and

Lake View Terrace Branch Library in Los Angeles (the latter two of which are profiled in... Read more

Ills caused by global climate change range from increased frequency of asthma and heat stroke to more intense storms and species extinction. While environmentalists go far past calling the phenomenon a “nuisance,” they are applauding eight states and one city for doing just that. The attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Iowa, New... Read more

ozone levels in the eastern half of the U.S. exceed air quality standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), predicts a report published by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The study,

Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More... Read more

At the June 2004 American Institute of Architects (AIA) national convention in Chicago, the Portland Cement Association (PCA) rolled out a sustainability initiative, “Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World.” Part of PCA’s Cement Manufacturing Sustainability Program, the initiative will help the industry develop sustainability guidelines,... Read more