now being manufactured in Perrytown, Texas, can be used in place of both framing and drywall in partition walls. At $19 each for 4’ by 8’ (1200 mm by 2400 mm) panels, they are very competitive with conventional stud framing within a reasonable shipping distance from the plant. The panels... Read more

Steven Winter Associates, Inc., of Norwalk, Connecticut, has been awarded a grant through the U.S. Department of Energy’s 1995 Small Business Innovative Research program to design advanced modular townhouses for urban infill sites. The company has been charged with designing townhouses that employ renewable energy and energy conservation... Read more

With the Internet distribution this past August of a draft synthesis report by the three Working Groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suddenly global warming is back in the news. The report concludes that “the observed increase [in global temperature] over the last century (0.3°C–0.6°C... Read more

How can we be confident that a particular manufacturer or company is committed to environmental improvements? There are certification systems for specific environmental claims, or for particular products, but as the best management practices and environmental goals evolve, how do we know that the... Read more

Environmental Building Consultants, 312 A Jefferson Ave., Cheltenham, PA 19012-2021; 215/663-1611, 215/663-1637 (fax), ehouse@omni.voicenet.com (e-mail); $50 for PC or Macintosh diskette containing database and software to run it.

This initial release of an IAQ products database contains about 450 listings... Read more

I very much appreciate your recognition of the need for and efforts to identify priorities for “green building” (whatever that is). Such priorities can either be defined implicitly by the buildings a “green designer” creates or by some systematic process based on a hierarchy of environmental problems. Your... Read more

Building Industry Professionals for Environmental Responsibility (BIPER) is a new lobbying group founded to counter the frequently anti-environmental message governments receive from mainstream industry organizations. Annual membership is $35. Three levels of membership allow members to choose the frequency of contacts from the... Read more

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Efforts to establish a National Institute for the Environment (NIE) are proceeding in Washington, and they may even pick up speed as a way to consolidate environmental research efforts that are being handled through many different agencies. A bill to establish the Institute is expected to be introduced in... Read more

A fire destroyed 5 million pounds of recycled PET in a warehouse belonging to Image Industries, Inc., makers of Image Carpet, according to the July 31 issue of

Plastics News. No one was injured in the blaze, and the origin is unknown. The burned material represents only a small portion of the company’s stock, and it was insured.

Janet Marinelli and Paul Bierman-Lytle. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1995. 272 pages. Hardcover $45; paperback $21.95.

Brand new from one of the pioneers in low-toxic, environmental architecture and one of the field’s most eloquent writers,

Your Natural Home is a superb resource for... Read more

Fluorescent lighting was introduced in the 1920s as a more energy-efficient alternative to incandescent lighting. Over the past two decades, technology improvements have gradually increased the acceptability of fluorescent lamps for many more applications. Light quality was dramatically improved with triphosphor... Read more

A four-month-old initiative within the U.S. Postal Service aims to revise design guidelines and material specifications to improve environmental performance. The Washington, D.C. office of HOK, Inc. was recently retained to help develop the proposed changes, which will be presented to senior Postal Service staff for review in late October. To... Read more

I read your article “Steel or Wood Framing, Which Way Should We Go?” in the Volume 3, Number 4 issue of EBN with considerable interest and anticipation, but did not see a sufficient discussion on the major reason for building differently with steel studs: the problem of mold growth at the thermal bridge over... Read more

The Wild Lawn Handbook: Alternatives to the Traditional Front LawnStevie Daniels, 1995. Macmillan, 15 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10023; 800/858-7674. Hardcover, 223 pages, $20 ($27.95 Canada).

Written for homeowners who are questioning the ecological and financial cost of maintaining a traditional lawn... Read more

NOLS had established a base for sea kayaking and other water activities on the Baja California peninsula, in... Read more

The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) has announced a design competition for completed buildings north of 40 degrees north latitude. Judging criteria include energy and resource efficiency and bioregional appropriateness. There is no fee for submissions, which must be received by December 31, 1995. Contact NESEA at 413/774-6051,... Read more

We first learned about Icynene at the First Annual Conference on Alternatives to CFCs and Halons in November 1990. At that time it was a tiny Canadian company (founded in 1986) with a type of foam insulation that had no harmful effects on the Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer. Company founder... Read more

Just as certain segments of the HVAC and insulation industries have begun a widespread shift to the ozone-safe, chlorine-free hydrofluorocarbon HFC-134a, new environmental concerns have been raised about this compound. Researchers at the Cambridge, Massachusetts firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research suggested... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy has published proposed voluntary guidelines for rating home energy performance. The guidelines were drafted by the Home Energy Rating Systems (HERS) Council for DOE and are designed to encourage uniformity among the various methods used to rate the energy efficiency of both new and existing residential buildings.... Read more