The Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) was created in 2002 to help the industry meet the carpet recycling and reuse goals set forth by the Memorandum of Understanding for Carpet Stewardship (MOU), a voluntary agreement signed by members of the carpet industry, government entities, and nongovernmental organizations. How successful is CARE?... 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

ED+C) magazine has announced the winners of its annual Excellence in Design Awards. This year’s jury included

ED+C staff members as well as Rick Fedrizzi, president and CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC); Jim Nicolow, AIA, head of the sustainability initiative at Lord, Aeck &... Read more

Outside the window a phoebe was bringing food to her nest under the eaves. I had positioned myself next to the window in the small lecture room as I always try to do at meetings—when I am fortunate enough to be in a meeting facility with windows. Being able to glance out the window from time to time helps me relax and, I think, even focus on... Read more

synthetic gypsum from coal-burning power plants (a pre-consumer recycled material), and when wallboard scraps are diverted from landfills they are typically ground into soil... Read more

Innovative Design, Inc., of Raleigh, North Carolina, was recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for “Excellence in Energy Efficiency.” The company was honored in March 2006 as the first architecture firm to receive recognition for energy-efficient design. The recognition was based on Innovative Design’s participation in... Read more

Arizona Public Service Company (APS) has announced the opening of the state’s first solar-thermal power plant, and the first built in the nation in 17 years. Built by Solargenix Energy, LLC, of Raleigh, North Carolina, the plant features over 100,000 ft2 (9,000 m2) of parabolic-trough mirrors—looking like several rows of mirrored half-pipe—that... Read more

U.S. emissions of greenhouse gasses, which cause global warming, rose 1.7% between 2003 and 2004, to the highest level on record, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Citing reductions in methane and nitrous oxide emissions, EPA claimed progress. “While the U.S. economy expanded by 51% from 1990 to 2004, emissions have... Read more

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) dominate the plenum-rated electrical and data cable market (see

EBN

Vol. 13, No. 3), but a newcomer from GE Plastics could offer an intriguing alternative. In December 2005, Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. (UL) listed GE’s Flexible Noryl® resin for wire coating... Read more

We are thrilled to announce that Tristan Roberts has joined our staff as associate editor of

Environmental Building News. Tristan grew up on a small dairy farm in upstate New York; attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts; graduated from Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont, with a degree in philosophy and... Read more

Ten states, two cities, and three environmental organizations have sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for not regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. While the Clean Air Act requires EPA to regulate air pollutants, the Bush administration claims carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses do not qualify as... Read more

Detective James Zadroga’s January 5, 2006, death of respiratory failure is the first to be officially blamed on exposure to dust from the September 11, 2001, collapse of the World Trade Center. “It is felt with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the cause of death in this case was directly related to the 9/11 incident,” according to... Read more

A water conservation bill currently moving through the California Legislature would set the maximum water consumption for toilets at 1.3 gallons per flush (gpf; 4.9 lpf). The legislation, Assembly Bill 2496, was authored by John Laird (D–Santa Cruz) and passed the State Assembly on May 15, 2006. If approved by the Senate and signed into law,... Read more

A $1 billion rush order for the Indonesian tropical hardwood merbau is designated for construction of the 2008 Beijing Olympic sports venues, according to an April 2006

New York Times report. The deal is part of $7 billion China invested in Indonesia last year—much of the investment is going toward replacing valuable ecosystems with... Read more

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) will accept presentation proposals for its 2007 national convention and design exposition, themed “Growing Beyond Green,” through July 1, 2006. The conference will be held May 3-5, 2007, in San Antonio. Details are online at www.aia.org/conted_convention/. For more on AIA’s commitment to green design... Read more