BuildingGreen Report

Blog Post

June 4, 2010

A three-year-old North Carolina company, Earthstone Products, has introduced a great-looking, relatively inexpensive recycled-granite paver. Used both indoors and outdoors, the pavers are manufactured from waste slabs of granite.

According to John Tesh, the sales and marketing director at Earthstone, 25% of a slab of granite is... Read more

Blog Post

June 1, 2010

EPA's new specification for water-efficient homes works well for all sorts of builders and even remodelers Although EPA's criteria for WaterSense labeled new homes were only recently released, custom and production builders from Georgia to Arizona, from Montana to Hawaii, are signing up. With typical overall water savings of more than 20... Read more

Blog Post

Can insulation materials, which we use to save energy and help prevent climate change, cause greenhouse gas emissions?

June 1, 2010

Can insulation materials, which we use to save energy and help prevent climate change, cause greenhouse gas emissions? Yes, in two ways. First, it takes energy to produce and ship these materials--which we refer to as "embodied energy"--and using fossil fuels for these energy needs releases carbon dioxide (our most significant greenhouse gas... Read more

Blog Post

May 28, 2010
We dump a huge amount of water, chemicals, and money on lawns in America, and we spew lots of pollution into the air mowing them. There are some better options. One is to eliminate lawns. The other is to plant a lawn seed mix that doesn't need to be kept on life-support. Pearl's Premium lawn seed, developed by environmental activist Jackson... Read more

Blog Post

May 25, 2010
Back when I was in college, a transformer failure forced the school to cut electricity demand by two-thirds--and I found myself leading student energy conservation efforts. As an avid environmentalist with a casual awareness of the importance of energy conservation when I entered college in the 1970s, a chance situation clarified for me just how... Read more

Blog Post

May 20, 2010

Today's op-ed piece in the New York Times presents a remarkably balanced viewpoint on LEED and green building issues. Unfortunately it also has a major blindspot.

First, the good points about the article, "Don't LEED Us Astray" (I love it that even the esteemed Times can't help but get in on not-very-subtle LEED punning). The author,... Read more

Blog Post

Niagara's Innovative 0.8 gpf "Vacuum-Assist" Stealth Toilet

May 20, 2010

Niagara Conservation has introduced a new toilet that's unlike anything on the market. It uses passive "vacuum-assist" technology to deliver a very quiet, effective flush that consumes just 0.8 gallons (3.0 liters)--making it, I believe, the most water-conserving of any flush toilet on the market.

Who knew there would be so many ways to... Read more

Blog Post

May 18, 2010
The high-profile roll-out of the highly secretive Bloom Box fuel cell, on CBS's 60 Minutes in February, ushered in a new round of excitement about fuel cells. Fuel cells have been around for over 50 years. They are, in essence, chemical batteries that churn out electricity as long as a fuel, such as hydrogen or natural gas, is fed in at the... Read more

Blog Post

May 17, 2010
After months of development, LEEDuser (which is powered by BuildingGreen.com) has added direct support of LEED for New Construction version 2.2 (LEED-NC v2.2). That means that you can access support to all LEED-NC v2.2 credits using LEEDuser's credit browser, and through our directory of LEED credits. For every credit in the LEED-NC v2.2 system... Read more

Blog Post

May 13, 2010
Continuing a trend of more efficient LED lights, Philips this week unveiled its LED replacement to the 60-watt light bulb. The 12-watt EnduraLED is a screw-in replacement that fits in standard fixtures, uses 80% less energy, and should last 25 times as long as the ubiquitous 60-watt incandescent light bulb.

LEDs are light-emitting diodes. Many... Read more

Blog Post

May 11, 2010
Fiber optics, that miracle of modern communications, can also be used to deliver natural light to spaces deep in a building. Last week I focused on tubular skylights, which provide a great way to bring daylighting into home offices, hallways, bathrooms, and other spaces. An aluminum tube that's highly reflective on the interior transmits... Read more

Blog Post

Welcome to our new blog dedicated to the issues of water, water efficiency, and water policy.

May 7, 2010

Welcome to our new blog dedicated to the issues of water, water efficiency, and water policy.

When we talk about the environment and environmentally responsible building, it’s almost always energy that takes the spotlight, with water pretty far down the list. But it’s not hard to see just how much of a back seat driver water can be:... Read more

Blog Post

May 6, 2010
Following John Manville's switch to a non-formaldehyde acrylic binder in 2002 and Knauf's 2009 introduction of its EcoBatt fiberglass insulation made with biobased binder instead of phenol formaldehyde, CertainTeed has introduced its own answer to the green fiberglass insulation trend.

The company began shipping Sustainable Insulation? on a... Read more

Blog Post

May 4, 2010

Much attention is focused on efficient lighting--from CFLs and LEDs to advanced controls. But for daytime lighting you can avoid electricity use altogether--with daylighting. Most daylighting is provided with windows or skylights (roof windows that are installed in the plane of the roof). For a lot of applications, there's another, easier... Read more

Blog Post

April 29, 2010
Those of us who have tracked solar energy innovations for several decades will likely have heard about Stirling engines. This sealed "heat engine" technology has been around a long time--since 1816, in fact--when it was invented by the Scottish clergyman and inventor Robert Stirling. For decades, while there were cool models to demonstrate the... Read more

Blog Post

April 27, 2010
If your heating system is old and inefficient, now is a great time to replace it with a new, high-efficiency model. There are eight months remaining to take advantage of the 30% federal tax credit that's available for installing energy-efficient gas- or oil-fired furnaces and boilers, as well as air-source heat pumps.

The American Recovery and... Read more

Blog Post

April 22, 2010
This being Earth Day--in fact the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day!--I thought it made sense to profile a really simple, really green product: the clothesline. In digging into clotheslines, I came across a number of manufacturers, including the Lehigh Group in Pennsylvania and the Swiss manufacturer Stewi.

Americans spend a lot of... Read more

Blog Post

April 21, 2010
The 40th anniversary of Earth Day arrives this week to relatively little fanfare. We're focused on other things: high unemployment, a moribund economy, residual sniveling over health insurance reform. But 40 years is an important milestone. I was the Earth Day coordinator at my junior high school in Wayne, Pennsylvania, 40 years ago. I remember... Read more

Blog Post

April 16, 2010
With commercial plumbing fixtures, one trend has been very clear over the past few years: the transition to hands-free operation. Users don't want to touch anything in restrooms, period. The other trend is water conservation. Unfortunately, these two trends are not always in sync.

False-flush is a fairly common occurrence with sensor-activated... Read more

Blog Post

The goal of this report was to get a handle on the ways in which LEED credits can be achieved.

April 16, 2010

We've just released a neat new report on what it costs to achieve specific LEED credits. Based on the current LEED-NC 2009 rating system, "The Cost of LEED" draws on the experience of veteran cost estimators to provide prices for specific measures a project team would consider. The report helps a team understand the implications of... Read more