To our great disappointment, senior editor Peter Yost, who joined our company in April of last year, has decided that spending his days ferreting out information and writing articles for

EBN is not the life for him. He wants to be working more directly with companies and builder programs that are leading the charge with green building... Read more

edited by Alex Wilson. U.S. Department of Energy, May 2001. Paperback and/or downloadable PDF file, 200 pages, free. Order from

www.eren.doe.gov/femp/ordermaterials.html or by calling 800/363-3732; or download from

www.eren.doe.gov/femp/techassist/green_fed_facilities.html.

The fifth Annual

U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Environmental Awards ceremony took place in Washington, D.C. on April 19, 2001. Among the 14 winning projects and initiatives were:

a survey to assess the regulatory barriers to more sustainable building and development.... Read more

The

Architecture + Energy: Building Excellence in Sustainable Design 2001 Awards were announced in July. This year the program was open to projects from outside the Pacific Northwest for the first time, and jurors noted that the entries were the best they had seen in a competition. The four winners were:

Whenever the term “plastics” is used, a whole generation of Americans immediately thinks of Dustin Hoffman in the 1967 movie classic,

The Graduate. Hoffman portrays Ben, a promising but largely directionless college graduate, whom one family friend cannot help but enlighten with the following advice: “Plastics.”

Indeed, the... Read more

The

American Tree Farm System has engaged PriceWaterhouseCoopers to review its certification and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses in relation to the American Forest & Paper Association’s (AF&PA) Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). The Tree Farm System is a program of the American Forest Foundation, providing technical... Read more

The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) has a new standard for recycled-plastic residential decking. This standard pulls together into one product specification the individual strength test methods for recycled plastic established almost four years ago (see EBN

Vol. 6, No. 9). While the standardized test methods created a... Read more

Solar electric buildings researcher, designer, and advocate Steven Strong was the recipient of this year’s prestigious Charles Greeley Abbot Award from the American Solar Energy Society (ASES). The award is given for significant contributions to the Society or to the field of solar energy. Strong is principal of Solar Design Associates in... Read more

The American Lung Association reports that in a nationwide random sample of office workers, 24% felt that there were air quality problems in their work environment and 20% believed that poor air quality affected their work performance. Sources of indoor air pollution include biological agents, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, radon, secondhand... Read more

by the Center for Sustainable Construction of the Building Research Establishment (London, England), 2000; online at www.constructionplus.co.uk. Two softbound publications: BR 389 2000 (Program introduction), £25; BR 390 2000 (Materials guide), £35

Dioxins emitted from daily open-barrel burning of just two households (a common practice in many rural areas) can equal emissions from a modern 200-ton-per-day municipal waste combustion facility, according to a recent EPA study. The disproportionately high emissions from barrel burning occur because of a combination of conditions considered “... Read more

A report requested by the Bush administration on global climate change was released by a committee of the National Academies’ National Research Council on June 6, 2001. The report summed up science’s current understanding of climate change by confirming that greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere and causing surface... Read more

Starting May 23, 2001, every new home in the City of Frisco, Texas must be built to the minimum standards of the city’s green building program, featuring the EPA Energy Star® Homes program. This makes Frisco one of the first cities in the U.S. with a mandatory green building program, and the first to mandate Energy Star standards. A... Read more

It’s never good to misquote a source, but it’s especially embarrassing when that source is one’s own research! In our “Buildings and the Environment: The Numbers” feature article (

EBN

Vol. 10, No. 5) we listed the amounts of paved area in the U.S. in millions instead of thousands. The correct values are:

Greenpeace has a new building products directory called the PVC Alternatives Database – Building the Future. The fully searchable international database lists over 236 (and counting) PVC-free products for the following building components: roofing, insulation, exterior cladding, windows and doors, flooring, wallcoverings, piping, and—often the... Read more

The World Resources Institute (WRI) has a

new global warming action Web site—

www.SafeClimate.net—where individuals and businesses can determine and take action on their carbon dioxide footprint. The site contains an easy-to-use carbon dioxide emissions calculator, suggestions for ways to reduce estimated emissions, and the... Read more