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:

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

PPG Coil and Extrusion Coatings has released a variant of its Duranar® coatings for metal roofs that contains special pigments to reduce solar gain. With these new “Duranar SPF” coatings, 98% of PPG’s standard colors meet the EPA Energy Star steep-roof threshold of 25% total solar reflectivity, whereas with standard Duranar coatings about half... Read more

is the winner of this year’s

ASLA Medal, bestowed by the American Society of Landscape Architects. Haag was instrumental in saving Seattle’s Pike Place Market, now one of the city’s most popular attractions. A complete list of ASLA award winners is online at

www.asla.org.

EPA unveiled the online Construction Industry Compliance Assistance Center (CICAcenter) in May, developed by the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, in partnership with the Associated General Contractors of America, the National Association of Home Builders, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, and the Golf Course... Read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just in time for Earth Day, The American Institute of Architects announced the Top Ten Green Projects for 2003. Winning entries include residential, commercial, and educational projects. The awards program was cosponsored this year by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Building Museum, and hosted online by BuildingGreen, Inc. Full... 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

California diverted 48% of its waste stream from landfills in 2002, according to the California Integrated Waste Management Board. A total of 34 million tons (31 million tonnes) of solid waste were diverted last year, a fourfold increase since 1990, when the Integrated Waste Management Act took effect in the state. This law requires every local... Read more

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

indoor air... Read more

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has named the Energy Center of Wisconsin winner of its

2002 Continuing Education Award for Excellence. The private, nonprofit Energy Center has worked with more than one third of the state’s 1,500 architects through its continuing education programs in an effort to improve the energy... Read more

Environmentalists won an important victory on April 3, when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted in favor of small-scale renewable-energy production. All net-metered solar and wind systems generating less than 1 MW of electricity, along with some hydrogen fuel cells, are exempt, according to CPUC’s decision, from paying a... Read more