Championing the
Changemakers

GreenSpec, with the Healthy Building Network’s Pharos Project to provide one... Read more

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh ranked various plastics based on their environmental impacts and found that bioplastics (made from corn, soy, and other agricultural materials) do not always outperform petroleum-based plastics. The study, published in

Environmental Science and Technology, looked at 12 plastics using life-... Read more

A heat pump relies on the well-understood refrigerant cycle to move heat from one place to another. The same basic principle used for a refrigerator... Read more

Southwall Technologies, the producer of Heat Mirror low-emissivity (low-e) suspended film for windows, and Dow Corning, the leading producer of silicone sealants, announced on November 9, 2010 the availability of a new glazing system that will enable Heat Mirror to be used with structural sealant glazing systems in large commercial buildings.... Read more

BuildingGreen, LLC, publisher of the GreenSpec Directory and Environmental Building News (EBN), announced its ninth annual Top-10 Green Building Products during the 2010 Greenbuild conference in Chicago. The list recognizes the most exciting products drawn from recent additions to GreenSpec, coverage in EBN, and BuildingGreen blogs.

... Read more

The number of green product certifications is large and growing—perhaps 100 so far in the U.S. alone. This month’s

EBN feature article provides guidance on the growing field of multi-attribute certifications. The editors of

EBN and our

GreenSpec Directory provide a lot more guidance like this in BuildingGreen’s new... Read more

By Jennifer AtleeThe goal of multi-attribute certifications is to recognize products that score well across a comprehensive battery of environmental, health, and even social measures. Some of these include full analysis of a product’s life cycle, while others simply use life-cycle thinking to identify the top issues to cover in the... Read more

I have gathered through sessions and conversations at Greenbuild that the educational sector is the next big sustainable design push. On the last day of Greenbuild I discovered a session about greening college campuses, with a unique panel—a student, an architecture professor, and a facilities manager, all from different universities.... Read more

I'm just back from Chicago, where I was attending the Greenbuild Conference of the U.S. Green Building Council. Despite the weak economy, some 27,000 architects, builders, developers, and manufacturers gathered for this 9th annual conference.

At Greenbuild, I moderated an interactive session looking at "hype vs. reality" with... Read more

I didn't get to spend as much time at the Greenbuild tradeshow as I would have liked last week, but I did spend three or four hours on 179,000 square-foot exhibit hall floor--that's four acres, by the way--Thursday afternoon... Read more

Is it the end of greenwashing? Not quite. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed changes to Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims (Green Guides) that would make greenwashing more difficult. The Green Guides interpret laws governing such claims; the proposed changes would offer new guidance and strengthen existing... Read more

Throughout all of the educational sessions I have attended so far—all on different topics—there has been one overarching theme: community; building communities that really work is the way of the future. One large tie to this is connectivity, pun intended. I have heard many case studies from airports to infill developments about... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has announced that, as of November 2010, the footprint of LEED-certified commercial space has surpassed one billion square feet. (That’s 100 million square feet of space for each of the 10 years of LEED’s existence.)

BuildingGreen, LLC, publisher of the GreenSpec Directory and Environmental Building News (EBN), announced its ninth annual Top-10 Green Building Products during the 2010 Greenbuild conference in Chicago. The list recognizes the most exciting products drawn from recent additions to GreenSpec, coverage in EBN, and BuildingGreen blogs.... Read more

Some of the best things about Greenbuild—and there are many—are the educational programs. Covering topics from energy labeling and building innovation to removing embodied carbon from the water supply—there really is something for everyone. The opening plenary which took place this morning, featured General Colin Powell and the closing... Read more

Alex Wilson, the founder of our company and our current executive editor (i.e., my boss), is being named the 2010 Hanley Award winner in a special event here at Greenbuild 2010 tomorrow. In recognition of this achievement, and to better understand how this innovative, always-curious visionary looks at the world, I recently asked him 10... Read more

This is my first time visiting Chicago, so I wanted to take a little time, away from Greenbuild and explore a bit. On the suggestion of a friend I chose to visit the Field Museum, my friend thought I would be able to make my way through the museum in about two hours; unfortunately I only had a little over an hour. Luckily the museum—... Read more

Number-one on my top-10 list of green building priorities is to reduce our consumption of energy.

Energy consumption carries with it numerous environment impacts. Most... Read more

The University of Oregon’s architecture department recently launched the state’s first doctoral program in sustainable design. According to the university, the Ph.D. program will focus on interdisciplinary investigations. Research topics will include design and policy for sustainable cities and livable communities; design for climate change... Read more