Championing the
Changemakers

has arrived at the University of California Riverside. Two hundred students and faculty members at UC Riverside have begun sharing 15 Honda EV PLUS electric vehicles as part of an international experiment Honda is conducting on car sharing. Through this IntelliShare program, which is part of Honda’s Intelligent Community Vehicle... Read more

Proposals are due by June 28, 1999 for grants from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to cover up to 50% of the cost of installing

grid-connected photovoltaics at New York State residences. A total of $1 million will be awarded, with a maximum of $500,000 for any one project. Look up PON 448-98 in the... Read more

The first extruded polystyrene (XPS) product for the U.S. insulation market with zero ozone-depletion potential was introduced late last year: High Performance Underlayment from Dow Chemical. Instead of the industry-standard HCFC-142b blowing agent, this XPS product is blown with HFC-... Read more

The

Coastal Living Awards program from

Coastal Living magazine recognizes the preservation and enhancement of environmental and cultural resources along the U.S. shorelines with awards in six different categories. The winners for 1999 are:

Responsible Development/Community:

Dewees Island, South Carolina (see... Read more

Public concern about the environment continues to grow. On December 9, 1998, the National Environmental Education & Training Foundation and Roper Starch Worldwide released the results of their seventh annual National Report Card on Environmental Attitudes, Knowledge and Behaviors. Two highlights, as reported in the Winter 1999 issue of... Read more

In an ongoing reshuffling of city services and personnel, the Austin Green Building Program (formerly “Green Builder Program”) is now a service of the city’s municipal utility, rather than a part of city government’s Environmental and Conservation Services Department. In the short term not much has... Read more

(formerly Trex LLC), maker of wood-plastic composite lumber for decking and other outdoor applications, went public on March 29, 1999 with an offering of 3.35 million shares. The company’s stock is being traded on the New York Stock Exchange with the symbol TWP. Trex is using the capital from the public offering to repay $26.3... Read more

Judith Kincaid of the Triangle J Council of Governments received the “

Greenbuilder of the Year” award from the Carolina Recycling Association at the Association’s annual conference. Kincaid is lead author of the

WasteSpec, a popular document on recycling of job-site waste from construction sites.

by Nelda Matheny and James R. Clark, 1998. International Society of Arboriculture, P.O. Box 3129, Champaign, IL 61826; 217/355-9411,

www.ag.uiuc.edu/~isa. Paperback, 184 pages, $45 plus $7 shipping & handling

Trees and Development is an important reference book for... Read more

For more than 30 years, the

Yale School of Architecture has required first-year students to design and actually construct a building. Working in teams, students come up with designs and submit them to a design competition, which is judged by the School of Architecture faculty. The entire class then refines the winning design... Read more

At the risk of getting into an extended discussion, I’d like to comment briefly on the quote of mine in “Paint the Room Green”(EBN

Vol. 8, No. 2, February 1999), in which I said that I had painted my own house with Livos paint and my wife couldn’t move in for 3 months. That was back in 1986, when... Read more

by The American Institute of Architects, 1999. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CD-ROM for Windows, Macintosh, or Unix computers, $125

Environmental Resource Guide (ERG) has been, since its inception in 1992, a leading resource on the environmental impacts of building materials (see

EBN

Vol... Read more

The Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vermont, which offers a wide range of courses and workshops on sustainable design and building, is looking for an assistant director. For information, contact executive director Peter Walcott at 888/496-5541 or designbuild@yestermorrow.org. For more about the school, visit their Web site:

... Read more

According to the

Los Angeles Times, a storage tank exploded on February 26 at the

SEGS II solar power plant in Barstow, California. The 900,000-gallon (3.4 million l) tank held Therminol, a hydraulic fluid that is used as a heat-transfer fluid, and was still burning four hours after the explosion. Heated to 850°F (450°C) by... Read more

1⁄2 to 1 gallon (2 to 4 liters) per flush, with remarkably few problems, and no change in the dynamics of the... Read more

This February the Center for Resourceful Building Technology in Missoula, Montana, long a leader in promoting green building practices, merged with the National Center for Appropriate Technology, headquartered in Butte, Montana. CRBT has become a project of NCAT, joining a wide family of NCAT projects that promote... Read more