The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC) has announced plans to install a 5 MW solar photovoltaic system (the largest system in North America). NJMC plans to harness space atop roofs, parking lots, and remediated landfills to accommodate the system, which will require 1.3 million ft2, or approximately 30 acres (121,000 m2; 12 ha) of space.... Read more

Rodman Industries, manufacturer of ResinCore1™—an FSC-certified, recycled-content particleboard made with phenolic resin—has announced that it will shut its doors by the end of May 2006. Rodman has been producing particleboard since 1965. The shutdown comes on the heels of last November’s unexpected folding of Dow BioProducts, which... Read more

Jason McLennon, founder and director of Elements, BNIM Architects’ sustainable design and consulting division, was named among

Building Design & Construction’s first annual “40 Under 40” architects, engineers, contractors, designers, and AEC business developers. The full list is at www.bdcnetwork.com/article/CA6316252.html.

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) plans to air “design: e2,” a six-part television series about “the economies of being environmentally conscious,” beginning in June 2006. Narrated by Brad Pitt, the series will delve into eight topics: design, water, energy, food, textiles, transportation, botanicals, and health. More information and a... Read more

The Florida Home Builders Association (FHBA) and the Florida Green Building Coalition (FGBC) have announced a partnership designed to promote green affordable housing. The partnership will jointly advocate use of the FGBC Green Home Designation Standard and Green Development Designation Standard, advocate incentives for builders and developers... Read more

In partnership with the International Interior Design Association and The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committees on the Environment and Interior Architecture, CoreNet Global has announced the 2006 winners of the Sustainable Leadership Awards.

HOK won the category for architecture and interior architecture or interior design... Read more

In December 2005 an editorial in Environmental Building News introduced the concept of “passive survivability,” or a building’s ability to maintain critical life-support conditions if services such as power, heating fuel, or water are lost, and suggested that it should become a standard design criterion for houses, apartment buildings, schools... Read more

Disturbing old farmland can release pesticides applied more than 100 years ago, contaminating surface water, according to Dartmouth researchers. The researchers found that lead and arsenic, widely applied as lead arsenate pesticide on orchards in the late 1800s and well into the 1900s, have become part of the fine silt and organic matter in the... Read more

EBN

Vol. 11, No. 1) and our recognition of that product as a 2002 Top-10 Green Building Product helped draw the green... Read more

The City of Chicago is giving 600 Solargenix Energy, LLC, solar-thermal water heaters to health clubs, laundromats, affordable housing units, and other entities that use a lot of hot water. Recipients will be responsible for installation and maintenance costs. “High gas prices are not going away anytime soon, and we want to make businesses and... Read more

Thirty plants across the U.S. are now producing Energy Star® manufactured homes, according to the Manufactured Housing Research Alliance. A complete list is available at www.mhrahome.org/pages/es_plant_list.htm. Encouraging further development, the Internal Revenue Service has ruled that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (see

EBN

... Read more

Recognizing the role of construction in the global economy and planetary ecology, in February 2006 the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) launched the Sustainable Building and Construction Initiative (SBCI). Part of UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry, and Economics (DTIE), SBCI will establish global baselines for green building,... Read more

CD-ROM released in 2005 by ASTM International, West Conshohocken, PA; 610-832-9585; www.astm.org; $193.

ASTM International has released an updated version of its “Sustainability in Buildings” CD-ROM (see

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Vol. 12, No. 7 for a review of the first version). Sponsored by ASTM’s Subcommittee on Sustainability, the CD... Read more

When I received this month’s issue of

EBN [Vol. 15, No. 2], with its feature article extolling the virtues of polished concrete floors, I did a double take. Although I am drawn to concrete as a “modernist’s” material of choice, I believe it is of questionable value as an environmentally friendly choice.

It is difficult to... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has approved tighter standards for dishwashers that carry the Energy Star® label. The new standard, which requires Energy Star dishwashers to be 41% more efficient than minimum federal standards, will take effect January 1, 2007. Current standards require Energy Star dishwashers to be 25% more efficient than... Read more

A study sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found no safe level of ground-level ozone, a component of smog linked to respiratory problems. The study, carried out by researchers at Yale and Johns Hopkins universities and published by

Environmental Health... Read more

Global Green USA, the U.S. affiliate of Green Cross International, has awarded two of its annual Millennium Awards to green building champions: William McDonough, FAIA, founding principal of William McDonough+Partners and cofounder of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, and Thomas C. Leppert, chair and CEO of Turner Construction. Also... Read more

A Rhode Island court found Sherwin Williams Co., Millennium Holdings, and NL Industries liable in February 2006 for creating a public nuisance by making lead-based paint before it was banned in 1978. Although the judge dismissed punitive damage claims, the jury ordered the companies to abate lead-based paint on an estimated 240,000 Rhode Island... Read more