SunPower Corporation has announced that their new A-300 crystalline-silicon solar cell converts over one fifth of the sunlight hitting it into electricity. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has verified a

20.4% conversion efficiency for the 125-millimeter, single-crystal A-300 cell, making it likely to become the most efficient... Read more

On May 9, 2003, the Board of Directors of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) unanimously passed a resolution titled “Support for Green Building.” The resolution lays out a number of issues and goals, which boil down to two primary objectives: to acknowledge and support the interest in green building among many builders and local... Read more

The

University of Cincinnati invites applications for a tenure-track position in the School of Architecture and Interior Design (SAID) in the area of environmental technologies. For further information, contact: David Lee Smith, Professor of Architecture, david.smith@uc.edu, 513-556-5291.

One hundred thousand homes have earned the Environmental Protection Agency’s

Energy Star® designation. Each home that meets the voluntary criteria uses an average of 30% less energy for heating, cooling, and water heating than a conventional home, saving homeowners about $200 to $400 annually. According to EPA, the program saves... Read more

, a Martha’s Vineyard design/build firm, seeks a residential architect and/or designer committed to ecological design. For details, visit

www.somoco.com or e-mail John Abrams at jabrams@vineyard.net.

On May 2, 2003, at the EnvironDesign® 7 conference in Washington, D.C., William McDonough announced the launch of a nonprofit organization to facilitate dissemination of the design approaches and resources his companies have developed. “We’re launching the GreenBlue program today to give away the cradle-to-cradle protocol freely,” McDonough... Read more

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Research Center has announced the winners of its third annual National Green Building Awards, “to honor and encourage builders, programs, advocates, and products in the advancement of environmentally friendly residential construction.” This year’s winners are:

Growing its collection of innovations in the flooring industry, Interface, Inc. has introduced FLOR™, a modular flooring system designed for use in homes. FLOR’s ten product lines represent a variety of fabrics, colors, textures, and patterns. According to Chip DeGrace, InterfaceFLOR’s vice president of marketing, “FLOR bridges hard surface and... Read more

Honeywell and BASF completed a major transaction on May 1, when Honeywell sold its worldwide engineering-plastics business to BASF in exchange for BASF’s worldwide nylon-fiber business and $90 million. With this transaction, BASF exited the fibers market to concentrate on plastics. The new Honeywell Nylon division will offer Honeywell’s Anso®... Read more

In our listing of green champions who were inducted into The American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows this year, we unfortunately omitted

Fulton (Tony) Gale, FAIA. Gale has been a stalwart champion of energy efficiency and sustainable design for decades and, as Seattle’s City Architect, was a driving force behind Seattle’s... Read more

Arlington, Massachusetts passed a new law in May requiring that construction or substantial renovation of all town-owned buildings achieves LEED™ Silver certification. According to the law, no project will be considered complete until certification has been confirmed by the U.S. Green Building Council or until an equivalent or greater rating... Read more

Hammons School of Architecture at Springfield, Missouri’s Drury University will integrate the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED™ Rating System into its curriculum, beginning this autumn. The school plans to increase the percentage of faculty who are LEED-accredited, offer a new course about the Council and LEED, and increase the prominence of... Read more

We appreciate EBN’s comprehensive article Forest Certification Growing Fast (EBN Vol. 12, No. 4). While we agree that the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has driven important improvements in forestry and alternative certification programs, we strongly disagree that industry- and government-backed “certification programs are becoming similar... Read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a list of 30 “Waste Minimization Priority Chemicals” to replace a draft list of chemicals that EPA identified in 1998 as persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic. Because of their resistance to deterioration and propensity to build up as they move through the food chain, these chemicals... Read more

On March 5, the province of Quebec adopted North America’s most stringent restrictions on the use of pesticides. The new Pesticide Management Code immediately prohibits the use of the most harmful insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides on public, semipublic, and municipal green spaces except golf courses. By April 2006, this prohibition will... Read more

outdoor air, while most consumer interest in these products has come from those looking to improve

indoor air... Read more

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Canadian forest-products giant Tembec has completed FSC certification of its 5-million-acre (2 million ha) Gordon Cosens Boreal Forest in northeastern Ontario. This forest, certified by SmartWood, is now the largest North American forest operation to carry FSC certification. By 2005, Tembec intends to certify all 32 million acres (13 million ha... Read more

The International Hotels Environment Initiative and Oceans Blue recently honored Meeting Strategies Worldwide with the first

Environmentally Responsible Meetings Award for its work on the 2002 Forest Leadership Forum. This event, showcasing ecological forest management certification programs, was held in April 2002 in Atlanta, Georgia.... Read more

A chemical used in food packaging and other plastics causes miscarriages and birth defects in laboratory mice, geneticists at Case Western Reserve University have found. Bisphenol A, used to manufacture the hard, clear plastic polycarbonate and a sealant to prevent cavities in teeth, mimics the hormone estrogen, according to the researchers,... Read more