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

Ten years ago,

EBN reported on the growing popularity of low-emissivity (low-e) glazing, which allows visible light to enter buildings while reducing unwanted heat gain and heat loss. Introduced in the early 1980s, with the energy crisis still fresh in America’s mind, low-e glazing gained market share quickly, and by July 1996 the... Read more

A panel of the National Academies of Science (NAS) has concluded that low doses of dioxin might not be as carcinogenic as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claimed in a 2003 draft risk assessment. When EPA first published an assessment of dioxin, in 1985, it labeled the chemical a “probable human carcinogen.” EPA upgraded the... Read more

EBN

Vol. 11, No. 3). The mainstream, copper-based replacements for CCA corrode fasteners more rapidly than CCA, increasing the risk of... Read more

Building materials giant USG Corporation has joined the Alliance for Sustainable Built Environments, a group launched in 2003 to educate the marketplace and top management on the benefits of reducing the impact of facilities on the environment and building occupants. “By joining the Alliance, USG can work with like-minded companies to help... Read more

A study published in the journal

Cancer Research in June 2006 links bisphenol-A (BPA)—used to make the hard, clear plastic polycarbonate as well as most epoxies—to cancer. BPA, which mimics the human hormone estrogen, altered the structure of genes in rats’ prostate cells when they were exposed to low doses of the chemical, the study... Read more

Charles Kibert, Ph.D., of the University of Florida’s Rinker School of Construction, has assembled an impressive collection of speakers from around the world for a sequel to the seminal Sustainable Construction conference he hosted in November 1994. Based on its draft agenda, the four-day affair looks to be a hybrid of Greenbuild’s practice-... Read more

The U.S. Army has announced that, beginning in 2008, all of its new buildings will achieve Silver or higher ratings in the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED® Rating System. LEED will supplant the Army’s own Sustainable Project Rating Tool (SPiRiT), which was modeled after LEED. The Army has also committed to certifying all of its housing once... Read more

Two projects under development, one in Boston, Massachusetts, and one in Cabinda, Angola, were among the projects recognized in June at the fourteenth Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) in Providence, Rhode Island. CNU’s 2006 Charter Awards recognize work that demonstrates an understanding of urbanism and the principles embodied in the CNU... Read more

If a proposed regulation from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is adopted as planned on September 28, 2006, the U.S. market for particleboard and similar interior-grade panel products will change dramatically. The proposed regulation drastically reduces the allowable levels of urea-formaldehyde (UF) emissions from composite wood... Read more

In a May 2006 announcement before the New York League of Conservation Voters, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a new Division of Sustainability that will operate within the Mayor’s Office of Operations. Bloomberg’s announcement, in which he called sustainability “a philosophy of realistic optimism,” follows his 2004 creation of a... Read more

Metropolis magazine, for their Hydro Wall design. Hydro Wall is a series of flexible bladders designed to store rainwater within a building’s walls. The water could be used for irrigation, flushing toilets, and a range... Read more