Sixty-one buildings are now certified under LEED™ versions 1.0, 2.0, and 2.1; and nearly 900 projects have registered for certification. There are now over 4,000 LEED-accredited professionals, and more than 10,000 people have participated in LEED training workshops. The pilot programs for LEED for Commercial Interiors (LEED-CI) and LEED for... Read more

Portland General Electric has expanded its

Earth Advantage™ program for green homes in the Northwest. In addition to satisfying the basic level of performance, homes can now achieve gold certification for performing especially well in indoor air quality, energy efficiency, or water conservation; or platinum certification for going... Read more

I’m happy that chromated copper arsenate (CCA) preservatives are finally being phased out [see

EBN

Vol. 12, No. 3], but one small problem remains: There is no way to tell wood treated with ammoniacal copper quaternary (ACQ) or other alternative treatments from that treated with CCA once it’s been installed and the stapletags... Read more

New Urbanist

Jeff Speck took over as director of design at the

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in August. Speck spent the past decade at the Miami, Florida firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, most recently as director of town planning for the firm. Along with Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Speck co-authored... Read more

The

use of ground granulated blast-furnace slag in cement reached a record 22.9 million metric tons (25.2 million tons) in 2002, up 22% from 2001, according to the Slag Cement Association (SCA). Blast-furnace slag, a mixture of nonmetallic minerals, is created in the reduction of iron ore to iron. According to SCA, using slag cement in... Read more

The current

“safe” level of lead exposure, endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, is not actually safe, according to a study recently published in the

New England Journal of Medicine. The study found that any level of blood lead concentration negatively affects children’s IQ... Read more

As part of its 21st annual

Lighting Design Awards, the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) is introducing a sustainability award to highlight “the growing importance of sustainable design to the profession of lighting design and to the world in which we live.” Applications for IALD’s 2004 design awards are due... Read more

Over the past year, three companies have begun marketing a low-density, open-cell polyurethane foam insulation made, in part, from soybeans. By far the best organized and established of these is BioBased Systems of Spring Valley, Illinois. Experienced users tell EBN that BioBase 501 works just as well as its petrochemical-based competitors, and... Read more

After surveying its member companies, the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association estimates that the industry used nearly 2 billion pounds (900 million kg) of

recycled glass and blast-furnace slag in the manufacture of fiberglass and slag-wool insulation last year. Of that total, 58% was glass cullet and 42% was slag. Since... Read more

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The Cool Roof Rating Council (CRRC), a member-based, nonprofit, educational organization, now has over 100 listings in its

Rated Products... Read more

A number of state legislatures are reviewing

bills related to indoor air quality this session. Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Texas, and Virginia are considering legislation specifically addressing mold contamination.

by Joseph W. Lstiburek, Ph.D., P.Eng.; Energy & Environmental Building Association, Minneapolis, MN, 2002. Available from EEBA, 952-881-1098,

www.eeba.org. Spiral-bound, 42 pages, $18 ($15 members).

EEBA Water Management Guide is a clear, concise booklet about preventing rain and groundwater entry into houses and light-... Read more

, a state-sponsored program, recently received an

Innovations in American Government Award—the “Oscar” of government awards—and $100,000 to support its activities. The nation’s first independent, ratepayer-funded energy-efficiency utility, Efficiency Vermont has saved more than 99,000 megawatt hours of electricity in... Read more

CD-ROM released in 2003 by ASTM International, 100 Barr Harbor Dr., PO Box C700, W. Conshohocken, PA 19428; 610-832-9585,

www.astm.org. Stock No.: Green03, $175 in North America, $193 elsewhere.

For the last three years a group of committed builders and other experts has been meeting under the purview of Building for Social Responsibility (BSR) in Vermont to create the nation’s most comprehensive—greenest—residential green building program yet. Vermont Built Green (VBG) is being piloted this summer with a huge array of green criteria.... Read more

Following on the heels of a growing concern over mold contamination comes

Mold Dog™, a group that trains dogs to find and sit on 18 of the most common toxic molds. For details, visit

www.mold-dog.com or call 1-800-Mold Dog.

The Environmental Council of Concrete Organizations is crisscrossing North America this August with a

“Road Show” on the role of concrete in sustainable design. The faculty includes two lecturers from the U.K. and one American, representing expertise in urban planning, architecture, engineering, and materials research. The speakers,... Read more

EBN

Vol. 11, No. 10 and

Vol. 6, No. 8). We recently discovered another such product—made by Bricor Analytical, Inc. in Colorado Springs, Colorado. While quite different from the ETL products technologically, Bricor... Read more