The Austin, Texas, 5th Annual Green Builder Conference will host the award ceremony of the Green Built Birdhouse Competition. The grand prize is two round-trip airline tickets to Europe. The contest is sponsored by the Conference, Austin’s AIA chapter, and Dynamic Reprographics. Conference attendance is required for entry into the contest (see... Read more

The United States took a surprisingly strong position on cutting greenhouse gas emissions this summer at the Second Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP2) in Geneva. On 17 July, Undersecretary of State Timothy Wirth announced that the U.S. will seek an amendment to the existing treaty to create “binding”... Read more

EBN is now cosponsoring an e-mail discussion group on green building. Joining us in this effort is Iris Communications, Inc., publisher of the REDI Guide™ to green building materials. This group should be a uniquely valuable forum for discussing ideas and issues, and getting quick answers to practical questions.... Read more

The new Georgia Institute of Technology Aquatic Center has 2,800 solar modules generating 344.5 peak kilowatts (kW) of electricity. One section of the array, with an output of 4.5 kW, is comprised of Solarex’s new 240-watt alternating-current (AC)... Read more

Amoco Foam Products, makers of the only extruded polystyrene insulation with significant recycled content, is being purchased by Tenneco Packaging, a division of Tenneco, Inc. of Greenwich, Connecticut. Even before the purchase, through a $310 million stock acquisition, Tenneco was the largest producer of... Read more

First prize in the Van Alen Institute’s competition for a design for reuse of New York Harbor’s Governors Island was awarded to University of Pennsylvania graduate student Peter Hau for his plan to transform the Island into a regenerative garden. Entitled: “Open Narratives: Reconfiguring the Air, Land and Waters,” Hau’s proposal includes plants... Read more

The country’s first commuter bike station has opened in Long Beach, California, according to the Urban Land Institute’s June 1996

Land Use Digest. The Bike Station, modeled after similar facilities in Japan and the Netherlands, provides secure parking for 150 bicycles, along with bike rentals, repairs, and accessories. It is located in... Read more

The Georgia Pacific Corporation (G-P) agreed on 18 July to a costly settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency following a long wrangle with regulators and lawmakers. The company will pay a $6 million fine and spend at least $26 million on environmental improvements under the agreement, according... Read more

was a finalist in

Utne Reader’s 8th Annual Alternative Press Awards this year. While we were not a winner, we were pleased to be recognized in the “Service” category.

by Eoin O. Cofaigh, John A. Olley, and J. Owen Lewis of the Energy Research Group, University College, Dublin. 1996. James & James (Science Publishers) Ltd., on behalf of the European Commission, Directorate General XII for Science Research and Development. Paperback, 160 pages, $50.00.

With great interest, I read your well-researched article on cork flooring in the January/February issue (Vol. 5, No. 1). As you concluded in the article, the harvest of commercial cork from the cork oak (

Quercus suber) tree is a relatively benign extraction that is one of nature’s best examples of a renewable, non-timber forest resource... Read more

Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, have achieved a new world record in thin-film photovoltaic cell efficiency. A record 17.7% “sunlight-to-electricity” efficiency was achieved with a compound semiconductor called copper indium gallium diselenide. While this efficiency is 60% higher than the... Read more

castellated I-beams—essentially, regular I-beams with much... Read more

A newly formed organization is now developing standardized testing protocols for indoor air quality related products and materials. The Product Emissions Testing Lab (PETL) Network is bringing together representatives of academia, government, and industry to achieve consensus-based procedures and to certify laboratories to test products... Read more

The world’s first independently certified, “well-managed” redwood lumber is now available from the Big Creek Lumber Company of Davenport, California in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Big Creek sells redwood, Monterrey pine, and Douglas fir from its 6,800 acres (2,750 ha) of forestland. The Scientific Certification Systems evaluation team called Big... Read more

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise in 1994, totaling 1,666 million metric tonnes carbon equivalent according to the report

Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-1994 published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, November 1995 (this figure does not include the net effect of carbon “sinks” in... Read more

When homebuilder Barbara Harwood stumbled across the quote for a new mechanical system for a grocery store owned by her husband, she knew that the loads were out of line. The quote called for a system... Read more

Now that we at

EBN have finally the caught up with the trends and have created our own website, we can slow down long enough to ask: Why are we doing this, anyway? Didn’t we have enough to do just publishing on paper? At least the courts have struck down Internet censorship, so we don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for... Read more

In an exciting breakthrough for energy conservation measures in residential development, Roger Perry has announced that all homes in his Meadowmount development in Chapel Hill, North Carolina will be built to guidelines from the Alternative Energy Corporation (AEC). The project will contain 715 houses, and total of 1298 residential units. AEC’... Read more