BuildingGreen Report

News Brief

June 1, 2005

Ecotone Publishing has announced plans to publish

Who’s Green?, envisioned as “the preeminent resource book for locating firms, organizations, and institutions that are actively participating in the growth of the sustainable design and construction field,” according to Ecotone. It will include architecture, engineering, interior design... Read more

Product Review

June 1, 2005
Nearly all interior-grade plywood panels are made with urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin. That reality is changing now that Columbia Forest Products—the largest producer of decorative interior panels in the U.S.—has announced its transition to a new soy-based adhesive invented at Oregon State University (OSU). Columbia has already switched production... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2005

The organizers of the Rethinking Sustainable Construction 2006 (RSC06) conference, set for Sarasota, Florida, in September, are calling for “creative content” proposals, ranging from research papers to problem-solving workshops. The international conference is intended to “produce an agenda for the future of green buildings,” as described in... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2005
SmartWood, the sustainable forestry program of the Rainforest Alliance, has audited and certified Potlatch Corporation’s 473,000 acres (190,000 ha) of Arkansas forestland according to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards. Additionally, Potlatch’s pine sawmill in Warren, Arkansas, has achieved FSC chain-of-custody certification, allowing the... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2005
Architects, Designers, and Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) has announced the 2005

Lewis Mumford Award winners. The award for Peace went to Architecture for Humanity for its “passion and dedication connecting architects and designers with communities in need around the world.” The award for Development went to United Indian Health... Read more

News Analysis

June 1, 2005
Are occupants more satisfied in LEED® buildings than in conventional buildings? This would seem to be a critical question for LEED users, if not for the green building community as a whole, given the connection between occupant satisfaction and the much-touted economic benefits of productivity and well-being. Yet occupant satisfaction isn’t easy... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2005
Chris Schaffner, P.E., a member of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED® advanced faculty, has started his own consulting firm, The Green Engineer. He will continue his work as an elected member of USGBC’s LEED-NC Core Committee and as a member of the LEED Indoor Environmental Quality Technical Advisory Group. Prior to founding The Green... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2005
The Portland, Oregon, city council has strengthened the city’s four-year-old green building policy (see

EBN Vol. 10, No. 2) to require that all new municipal facilities achieve LEED® Gold certification (joining only Scottsdale, Arizona, and Vancouver, British Columbia, in calling for Gold). Major retrofits and existing occupied buildings will... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2005
Green Roofs for Healthy Cities has announced the third annual Green Roof Awards of Excellence “to recognize green roof projects which exhibit extraordinary leadership in integrated design and implementation.” Intensive green roofs have more than 6" (152 mm) of planting medium, while extensive have 6" or less. More information about green roofs and... Read more

News Analysis

June 1, 2005

A bill being debated in the California legislature would ban both bisphenol-A and certain phthalate plasticizers in baby products. Bill AB 319, introduced in the California legislature in February 2005 by Assemblywoman Wilma Chan of Oakland, would ban, effective January 1, 2007, the manufacture, sale, or distribution in commerce of any product... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2005

The Council of the District of Columbia has enacted a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) that applies to all retail electricity sales in Washington, D.C. The two-tiered system establishes yearly benchmarks for tier-one and tier-two resources. By 2022, all utilities must generate 11% of their electricity from tier-one resources, including solar... Read more

News Brief

June 1, 2005
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE) has released the first draft of Guideline 10P, “Criteria for Achieving Acceptable Indoor Environments,” for public review. “Guideline 10 will be most helpful to designers who want to understand the interactions between thermal conditions and indoor air... Read more

Feature

Greening the Design and Construction of Healthcare Facilities

June 1, 2005

What we do to our environment, we do to ourselves, the saying goes. Nowhere is this principle played out more dramatically than in our hospitals, where doctors and nurses work the front lines against environmental illness, treating patients for cancers caused by exposure to toxic materials, asthma triggered by breathing dirty air, and heat... Read more

News Brief

May 1, 2005

The Northern California chapter of Architects, Designers, and Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) has announced a new scholarship to promote “solutions to problems of poor indoor air quality, electromagnetic fields, mold, and other environmental toxins,” in the hopes of preventing environmental illness including multiple chemical... Read more

News Brief

May 1, 2005
by John Abrams; Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT, 2005; 328 pages, $27.50, hardcover

South Mountain Company, cofounded by EBN advisory board member John Abrams, has been a pioneer in democratizing the workplace. The Martha’s Vineyard design-build firm, founded in 1975, became an employee-owned company in 1987. Not only is... Read more

News Analysis

May 1, 2005
In March 2005, Harvard University launched a Green Building Loan Fund. This $3 million fund for new construction projects is modeled on an existing fund that supports retrofits and renovations—the Green Campus Loan Fund. Both are revolving funds that provide capital for investments in energy and resource efficiency and get repaid by claiming a... Read more

News Brief

May 1, 2005
Sarah Susanka, author of the

Not So Big House series, was named a 2005 Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Along with 65 other architects, Susanka will be invested during a ceremony on May 20. The complete list of 2005 Fellows is online at www.aia.org/fellows_default/.

News Brief

May 1, 2005

A class-action lawsuit against DuPont was finalized in February 2005, resulting in a $108 million settlement (see

EBN

Vol. 13, No. 11 for more on the tentative settlement). DuPont was charged with polluting the drinking water of several Ohio and West Virginia communities with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C8,... Read more

News Brief

May 1, 2005
The California Integrated Waste Management Board is sponsoring a competition for prototypes of building and landscaping products made out of tires culled from the state’s waste stream. Products will be displayed and judged at the California State Fair, to be held in Sacramento in July 2005. The competition is open to anyone who resides in... Read more

News Brief

May 1, 2005
North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad announced plans in March 2005 for North America’s largest biodiesel manufacturing plant, to be constructed in Minot beginning late this summer. The $50 million North Dakota Biodiesel, Inc., plant will be able to produce 100,000 tons (91,000 tonnes) of biodiesel each year from more than 355,000 acres of canola. The... Read more