BuildingGreen Report

News Analysis

November 1, 2005

Waterless Co., LLC, manufacturer of No-Flush™ urinals (see

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Vol. 7, No. 2), is offering $500,000 in discounts on its urinals to building owners, schools, colleges, cities, counties, state agencies, the military, and other facilities in areas affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. For more information, visit www.waterless.... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) is inviting submissions for the 2006 National Green Building Awards, to be presented at the National Green Building Conference, March 12-14, 2006, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Entries are due December 23, 2005. For details, visit www.nahb.org/greenbuildingawards.

News Brief

November 1, 2005

In balloting that closed on October 28, 2005, the membership of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) voted overwhelmingly to approve version 2.2 of USGBC’s flagship LEED® for New Construction (LEED-NC) rating system. While other versions of LEED have been released in the interim, this vote endorses the first substantive update of the NC... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

The Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability (MTS) is preparing to release its Sustainable/EPP Flooring Standard© for all hard-surface flooring, following a public meeting in Dallas, Texas, on November 1. MTS is also holding organizational meetings for two new standards it is seeking to develop: the Integrated Design Process... Read more

Product Review

November 1, 2005
Toto, a leading toilet manufacturer whose toilets have consistently been among the best in terms of flush performance, introduced to North America the Aquia™ Dual-Max™ dual-flush toilet in May 2005. While this toilet has been available elsewhere for five or six years and is the most popular toilet in Thailand, where it is manufactured, according... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

The Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, has announced the establishment of the Haworth Chair in Integrated Design, funded by Haworth, Inc., under the “Project

evolve” partnership with Direct Energy Business Services. The announcement did not specify whether the Haworth Chair holder will be... Read more

News Analysis

November 1, 2005
Tokyo, Japan, was the latest venue for the World Sustainable Building Conference (SB05), which began in 1998 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and took place in between in the Netherlands and Norway. As at past events, a wide range of technical sessions and poster presentations featured research and experiences from around the world.

A prominent... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005
Blakely Hall, a community center and town hall for Issaquah Highlands, a planned community near Seattle, Washington, earned two Globes (out of four possible) in the Green Building Initiative’s Green Globes™ green building performance tool in September 2005, making it the first U.S. building to receive Green Globes certification. The 7,000 ft2 (650... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005
Lighting for Tomorrow, a national lighting fixture design competition held by the American Lighting Association, the Consortium for Energy Efficiency, and the U.S. Department of Energy, has announced the winners in its second annual competition (see

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Vol. 13, No. 8 for winners of the first competition). All prototypes had to meet... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

A September 2005 report from New Ecology, Inc., and Tellus Institute demonstrates that green affordable housing is more cost-effective than conventional affordable housing. The report,

Costs and Benefits of Green Affordable Housing, features case studies of 16 green affordable housing projects around the country and lays out the long-... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2005

The Rainforest Alliance, an accredited certifier of compliance with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards, has published the SmartGuide to Green Building Wood Sources, a comprehensive listing of all FSC-certified suppliers in North America, including those certified by organizations other than the Rainforest Alliance’s SmartWood program.... Read more

News Brief

October 1, 2005

Green Built Home™, a voluntary green building program of the Wisconsin Environmental Initiative, in partnership with the Madison Area Builders Association, has been partnering with Habitat for Humanity of Dane County to certify all new Habitat homes as Green Built Homes. For 2005, all new Habitat homes will earn at least 112 points in the Green... Read more

News Brief

October 1, 2005
The mission of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) is “to be the leading source and teacher of wilderness skills and leadership that serve people and the environment.” When Taylor Galyean set out to design a set of structures for the NOLS Mexico Branch on Baja California, his goal was to embody that mission in the facility. We first... Read more

Op-Ed

October 1, 2005
It is easy to see what led to the catastrophe Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans: a city of a half-million people at an average elevation of six feet (2 m) below sea level; wetlands that have been disappearing for decades for lack of replacement silt from the Mississippi River’s annual flooding; a city that has been sinking as its silt soils... Read more

News Brief

October 1, 2005
The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation—together with the New York Department of Buildings, NYC Audubon, the Real Estate Board of New York, and BOMA New York—has launched

Lights Out NY, a voluntary program designed to reduce the number of migrating birds killed by flying into city windows at night.

Lights Out NY encourages... Read more

News Brief

October 1, 2005

from Architectural Computer Services, Inc. (Arcom, producers of The American Institute of Architects’ Masterspec®), www.arcomnet.com, 800-424-5080. Softcover book and CD-ROM, 2004, 250 pages, $240.

As anyone who has tried knows all too well, incorporating all the requirements for a LEED® project into the construction documents is no... Read more

News Analysis

October 1, 2005

Nyle Special Products, LLC, has suspended production of the Cold-Climate Heat Pump™ (CCHP) amid skirmishing between the manufacturer, its former general manager, and the developer of the technology. Duane Hallowell resigned as general manager of Nyle in February to form Hallowell International, LLC, which acquired the manufacturing rights to a... Read more

Product Review

October 1, 2005
Ice-based thermal energy storage systems have long been attractive to utility companies as a way to reduce peak loads on the electric power grid, and to commercial building owners as a way to save money. But the technology has been slow to catch on and generally limited to large buildings that use chillers. The Ice Bear™, introduced commercially... Read more

News Brief

October 1, 2005

Air Quality Sciences, Inc., has developed a series of techniques to test product

assemblies, as opposed to individual products, in controlled environmental chambers. Examples of these assemblies include paint and wallboard; carpet, adhesive, and subfloor; and laminate, adhesive, and particleboard. “Sometimes emissions may be reduced,”... Read more

News Brief

October 1, 2005

Texas was among the first states to adopt a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), calling in 1999 for 2,000 megawatts (MW) of new renewable energy generation by 2009. Announcing that the state is on track to meet that target by the end of 2005, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed Senate Bill 20, strengthening the RPS, in August 2005. According to... Read more