News Brief
Seattle’s
Environmental Home Center (EHC), profiled in “Getting the ‘Right Stuff’: A Guide to Green Building Materials Retailers” (EBN
Vol. 10, No. 4), lost its main warehouse, showroom, and offices to a fire on August 11, 2004. Two warehouses remain standing, however, and the company has laid out an aggressive recovery plan in... Read more
Op-Ed
News Brief
Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet by Vijay Vaitheeswaran; Farrar,... Read more
News Analysis
News Brief
2004 Energy Efficiency Integration Awards: the
Cesar E. Chavez Education Center in Oakland, the
Challengers Tennis Club for Boys and Girls in Los Angeles, and
Lake View Terrace Branch Library in Los Angeles (the latter two of which are profiled in... Read more
News Analysis
On July 8, 2004, the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) imposed a moratorium on the issuance of building permits in Middletown, a community of 3,000 just west of Frederick. The cause of this action was concern that the town’s water supply is inadequate to satisfy both existing and proposed development.
This is the second time... Read more
News Brief
ozone levels in the eastern half of the U.S. exceed air quality standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), predicts a report published by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The study,
Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More... Read more
News Brief
The day-long seminar “Educating the Educators: A Crash Course on Eco Design™” is intended to quickly
bring design educators up-to-speed on green design. David Bergman, architect and teacher at Parsons School of Design, and Erika Doering, interior designer and teacher at Parsons and Pratt Institute, developed the program with the... Read more
News Brief
Nicola Valley Institute of Technology in Merritt, British Columbia has won a
Governor General’s Medal for Architecture, jointly administered by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts. Shared by the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and the University College of the Cariboo, this 48,600... Read more
News Analysis
Ills caused by global climate change range from increased frequency of asthma and heat stroke to more intense storms and species extinction. While environmentalists go far past calling the phenomenon a “nuisance,” they are applauding eight states and one city for doing just that. The attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Iowa, New... Read more
News Brief
The Aamjiwnaang First Nation near Sarnia, Ontario is experiencing an increasingly
skewed ratio of female to male births, according to a July 31 article in the
Globe and Mail. Until recently, the community tracked normally, but in 1994, the ratio suddenly shifted and has been heavily skewed toward females ever since. In 2003, the... Read more
News Analysis
At the June 2004 American Institute of Architects (AIA) national convention in Chicago, the Portland Cement Association (PCA) rolled out a sustainability initiative, “Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World.” Part of PCA’s Cement Manufacturing Sustainability Program, the initiative will help the industry develop sustainability guidelines,... Read more
News Brief
The Slag Cement Association has recognized two projects for replacing energy-intensive portland cement with blast-furnace-slag cement, an industrial waste byproduct from the reduction of iron ore to iron (see EBN
Vol. 8, No. 6).
Clearview Elementary School in Hanover, Pennsylvania (see
EBN
Vol. 11, No. 11 or... Read more
Product Review
Fusiotherm is durable, recyclable, and free of PVC, heavy metals, and flame retardants. It's also far easier to install than copper at about the same price.
There’s a new option for potable-water, hydronic-heating, and other pressurized piping applications: polypropylene from the German company Aquatherm, GmbH. Aquatherm has been producing high-quality Fusiotherm® polypropylene (PP) piping for 30 years with tremendous success—never having paid a claim for damage due to failure of the piping,... Read more
News Brief
University of Manitoba interior design students
Tamara Nyysola and
Corina Penner have won the first-ever
GreenInteriors Student Design Competition. Dow BioProducts, Inc. and
Interior Design magazine sponsored the first annual competition, which drew 55 entries from 14 design schools across North America. The... Read more
Feature
Impervious surfaces and the resulting stormwater runoff are to blame for surface water pollution, flooding, erosion, and low urban tree survival rates, but porous pavement can solve these and other environmental problems.
There’s a lot of pavement in the United States—nearly 38,000 square miles (9.9 Million ha) or an area about the size of Indiana, according to calculations EBN has done (Vol. 5, No. 1). The vast majority of this is impermeable surface that contributes to stormwater runoff. In certain applications, that pavement can be made porous so that the... Read more
News Brief
On June 14, 2004, shortly before his June 21 resignation, Connecticut Governor John Rowland signed “An Act Concerning Climate Change,” PA 04-252, into law. The act, which takes effect October 1, establishes a goal of
reducing Connecticut’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the beginning of 2010 and to 10% below 1990 levels by... Read more
News Analysis
Federal Environmental Executive John Howard resigned from his position effective June 11, 2004 to return to Austin, Texas. “It has been a privilege and an honor to have served with so many in working to improve the Federal government’s (and America’s) environmental stewardship,” Howard said in his letter of resignation. “I believe we have made... Read more
News Brief
The
U.S. Green Building Council and
Meeting Strategies Worldwide were awarded the
Environmentally Responsible Meetings Award from the International Hotels Environment Initiative for their work to limit the environmental impact of Greenbuild 2003. This award is the highest honor for environmental responsibility among... Read more
News Analysis





