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

A one-square-foot sample of low-e glazing, representing the one billionth square foot produced, was recently presented to Christine Ervin, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy by Mike Koenig of Andersen Windows and Jim Larsen of Cardinal IG. The presentation was in recognition of ongoing support provided by DOE of window... Read more

Schuller Corporation, a publicly traded manufacturer of fiberglass insulation based in Denver, Colorado, announced on May 17 that it is acquiring NRG Barriers of Portland, Maine, one of the nation’s leading producers of polyisocyanurate foam insulation. Both Schuller and NRG have been leaders in improving the environmental characteristics of... Read more

Nuclear proponents have often pointed to the low electricity prices in France as evidence that high reliance on nuclear power keeps electricity prices low. But by comparing

pre-tax electricity rates, that claim is dispelled. According to the May/June issue of

World Watch Magazine, the three European countries with the lowest pre... Read more

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

by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 700 Montreal Road, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0P7, Canada. 235 pages, paperback, $29.99.

A primary weakness of light-gauge steel framing for houses has been its severely compromised thermal integrity. In general, the simplest way to get a steel-framed wall to perform like a 2x6 wood-stud wall is to use 2x4 steel studs and add 2” (50 mm) of insulating foam sheathing. Now, researchers at Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) are seeking a... 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

The pilot lights on gas-fired fireplaces waste a lot of energy. That’s one conclusion of a recent study by Skip Hayden of the Combustion Gas Research Laboratory of CANMET and Consumers Gas, a major Canadian gas utility. Fifty-two homes with significant use of gas fireplaces were surveyed; 38 of these had continuous pilots. In the homes with... Read more

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.

The Smart Wood Program of the New York City-based Rainforest Alliance recently announced a series of new partnerships and initiatives that should help make certification available to a wider range of forestry programs. In the Northeast, Smart Wood has teamed up with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). As a member of the emerging Smart Wood... Read more

I’ve worked the last 25 years on developing parts of what is now called “Eco-design,” under the belief that healthier buildings, lower energy use, and less ecological impact were important. This was only to discover recently that all this time I was still looking at things in isolation rather in their ecological interconnectedness!

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

A plethora of stay-in-place insulating concrete form building systems have been introduced in the last decade. Among these is the Rastra system—a European technology that is now getting established in the western United States.

The Rastra system uses 100% recycled expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam, ground into small beads and mixed with... Read more

Using the natural cycles of plant and animal life instead of chemicals and mechanical systems to process wastewater holds a great deal of attraction. Conventional sewage treatment systems already rely on bacteria to do much of the work, but these organisms perform very restricted functions within a system that is generally mechanistic.... Read more

Dutch publishers of a simplified guidebook for choosing environmentally preferable materials are being sued for suggesting that zinc roofing be avoided. An English translation of the book has just been published in the U.K. under the title

Handbook of Sustainable Building (James & James Ltd., March 1996), but will not be distributed... Read more

Nominal 2x4 and 2x6 TimberStrand studs are now available in both standard and custom lengths.

TimberStrand was introduced in 1992... Read more

A hotly contested contract to provide green design services for a 200,000 ft2 (18,000 m2) science building at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont has gone to a team led by

EBN Advisory Board member Bob Berkebile of BNIM Architects in Kansas City. This green team includes engineers Greg Allen and Marc Rosenbaum, another

EBN... Read more

Stramit USA, of Perryton, Texas, has ceased operations. After less than a year of production but several years of start-up, the plant has shut down. Stramit began production in the spring of 1995, producing 21⁄4”-thick (57 mm) compressed-straw, paper-faced panels for use as interior partition walls. The panels can be substituted for a 2x4 frame... Read more

As always, your dossier on windows was very informative. Below are a few other points to look for.