We were pleased

Environmental Building News (EBN) gave a positive review to the American Forest & Paper Association’s (AF&PA)

National Wood Recycling Directory but somewhat disappointed with your opinion of our industry’s recycling efforts.

Expanding on its four-year-old carpet testing program (see

EBN

Vol. 3, No. 6), the Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) has launched a similar program to test emissions from carpet adhesives. Initiated on March 31, 1996, the new program will test samples of participating product lines quarterly. Products that meet program guidelines... Read more

Electricity consumption from renewable energy sources is continuing to show strong growth in the United States. Wind energy has been growing the fastest, with consumption increasing 50% from 1990 to 1994 (from 0.024 to 0.036 quads), according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s 1995

Renewable Energy Annual. The photovoltaics industry is... Read more

The eco-shake™ shingles have heavily textured wood grain to mimic the look of wood shakes. They are 22 inches (250 mm) in length, packaged in random widths of 5, 7, and 12... Read more

The President’s Council on Sustainable Development and President Clinton have selected 15 recipients of Presidential Honors Awards, exemplifying successful integration of economic viability, environmental integrity, and social well-being. Award winners in the building, design, and building products fields include:

Dutch publishers of a simplified guidebook for choosing environmentally preferable materials are being sued for suggesting that zinc roofing be avoided. An English translation of the book has just been published in the U.K. under the title

Handbook of Sustainable Building (James & James Ltd., March 1996), but will not be distributed... Read more

In spite of tight construction budgets, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based architecture firm Innovative Design, Inc. has convinced several regional school districts to incorporate roof monitors for... Read more

A hotly contested contract to provide green design services for a 200,000 ft2 (18,000 m2) science building at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont has gone to a team led by

EBN Advisory Board member Bob Berkebile of BNIM Architects in Kansas City. This green team includes engineers Greg Allen and Marc Rosenbaum, another

EBN... Read more

Are our buildings making us sick? Yes, say an increasing number of indoor air quality specialists in government agencies, academia, and the emerging industry working to solve these problems. By some estimates, direct medical costs associated with IAQ problems in the United States are as high as $15 billion per year, with indirect costs of $60... Read more

The January 22nd issue of

Newsweek—with a cover story suggesting that global warming might be responsible for the season’s intense blizzards—arrived about the same time as a letter from my father-in-law. “So much for global warming,” he noted with a jab, in response to the harsh weather we were enduring.

Builders and designers committed to energy- and resource-efficient construction strategies have long struggled with building codes that mandate conventional practice, even when alternatives might be more sensible. A new addition to the Lake County, Illinois building code offers one solution to this problem—in a complete, take-it-or-leave-it... Read more

William McDonough Architects, of Charlottesville, Virginia was awarded a contract for design of a new environmental studies building at Oberlin College with extensive green design goals.

Amoco/Enron Solar Power Development plans to build a four-megawatt photovoltaic (PV) generation plant in Hawaii in 1997 with a $1.14 million award from the Utility PhotoVoltaic Group (UPVG). The facility will use thin-film PV cells made by Solarex, which since January 1995 has been a subsidiary of the partnership between Amoco and Enron. Upon... Read more

Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, 55 Murray Street, Suite 330, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 4M3, Canada; 613/241-3600, 613/241-5750 (fax). Published bimonthly, 20 pages per issue, $79 per year (Canadian dollars in Canada, U.S. dollars in the U.S.), $59 for Green Building Information Council members.

Hemp,

Cannabis sativa, can be grown again in Germany with the recent lifting of a ban on hemp cultivation. Germany will join other European countries that cultivate hemp as a quality fiber source, which can reduce demand for forest products. A fiber-cement building block using hemp is already being produced in France. The states of... Read more

40 pages; $8.00 postpaid from the Center for Resourceful Building Technology, P.O. Box 100, Missoula, MT 59806; 406/549-7678.

The Natural Step held the first of many planned one-day workshops this February in Denver, Colorado and in Marion, Massachusetts to acquaint business leaders with this innovative movement that is quickly gaining steam in Europe. The... Read more

A group of evangelical Christians is urging support of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), according to a January 31 article in

The New York Times. Dr. Calvin DeWitt, who helped found the Evangelical Environmental Network, said in the article that the Endangered Species Act is “the Noah’s Ark of our day” and that “Congress and special... Read more

Thank you for the review you gave WWPA’s

Eco-Profile of Lumber Produced in the Western United States: Life Cycle Inventory of WWPA Western Lumber. Your comments on the study were both thorough and fair.

Northampton County, Virginia lies on the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula on the Eastern Shore (between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean). The tiny, rural county extends roughly 30 miles in length and averages just three miles wide. Dependent largely on agriculture, the county is struggling economically and its population of 13,000—... Read more