Building owners or leaseholders can deduct the cost of energy-efficient property installed in commercial buildings, and recent guidance issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) describes what taxpayers need to do to qualify. Qualifying for the deduction, enacted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and currently set to expire at the end of... Read more

The Building Research Establishment’s (BRE) EcoHomes environmental rating system for homes in Great Britain recently gave equal weight in its procurement guidelines to wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and by the Sustainable Forests Initiative (SFI). The move is making waves across the Atlantic because FSC, an international... Read more

Exposure to air pollution before birth can cause developmental delay in children, according to a study performed by Columbia University’s Center for Children’s Environmental Health and published by

Environmental Health Perspectives in April 2006. The study measured the exposure of pregnant women living in the Washington Heights, Central... Read more

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Vol. 15, No. 7), in July 2006 SierraPine, Ltd., added a new medium-density fiberboard (MDF) to its no-added-formaldehyde MDF product family. Arreis™ (“Sierra” backwards), like Medex® and Medite® II,... Read more

The Clackamas Community Land Trust, based in Clackamas, Oregon, has issued a call for entries to its 2006 green-built dollhouse competition and show, which will take place September 25 through October 5, 2006, in Portland, Oregon. A fundraiser for the land trust, the competition offers separate categories for architecture professionals, design... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has added the following members to its Core Research Committee: Gail Brager, Ph.D., professor and associate director of the Center for the Built Environment at the University of California, Berkeley; Drury Crawley, AIA, technology development manager at the U.S. Department of Energy; John Fernandez, AIA,... Read more

In June 2006, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors enacted the nation’s first ban on some products containing bisphenol-A (BPA), used to make the hard plastic polycarbonate as well as most epoxies. BPA, an endocrine disrupter, has been linked to a range of health effects—most recently prostate cancer (see

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Vol. 15, No. 7).... Read more

E Source, a subscription-based information provider focusing on energy efficiency and utility demand-side management, has been purchased from the McGraw-Hill Companies by a group of E Source managers, including Michael Shepard, one of the original founders. E Source Companies, LLC, with about 45 employees, remains located in Boulder, Colorado.... Read more

As Google™ has proven, the power of search engines on the Internet cannot be overestimated. We’re pleased to report that, having learned that lesson and using hardware and software from Google, we’ve now improved the search capability for our website at BuildingGreen.com and our

BuildingGreen Suite premium information service. Our new... Read more

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The Chicago City Council established the Green Roof Improvement Fund in June 2006, which will encourage owners of existing downtown buildings to retrofit them with green roofs. The $500,000 fund will match the investments made by building owners, up to $100,000 per project. “With more green roofs than any other city in the United States,... Read more

Originally designed, manufactured, and marketed 20 years ago, the Mister Miser urinal (see

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Vol. 6, No. 8) has been reintroduced. According to Rocco Corbino of Mister Miser, LLC, the product’s first incarnation—designed, manufactured, and marketed by his business partner’s father—was in some ways a victim of its own success... Read more