Championing the
Changemakers

transpired solar collector, Solarwall has initially been targeted... Read more

Americus, Georgia-based Habitat for Humanity International is well-known for its coordination of locally based affordable housing projects. Working largely with donated materials and volunteer labor, Habitat (with its many local affiliates) is now one of the nation’s twenty largest homebuilders. Minimizing environmental impact has not... Read more

A bill to create the National Institute for the Environment (see

EBN

Vol. 4, No. 5) has finally been introduced in the current Congress by Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ) and twenty cosponsors. The Institute is widely supported by business leaders, scientists, and environmentalists.

by Scientific Certification Systems, Inc., August 1995. Published by Western Wood Products Association, Yeon Building, 522 SW Fifth Avenue, Portland, OR 97204-2122; 503/224-3930, 503/224-3934 (fax). Spiral bound, 28 pages (not including appendices), $125.

Thanks for your article on “Establishing Priorities.”

The distinction of being the first government body to officially adopt a straw-bale construction code goes to the Napa County (California) Board of Supervisors. The Board adopted the voluntary guidelines in California’s new law, based on Assembly Bill 1314. The guidelines still require an engineer’s stamp on all plans, however, as does every... Read more

If our goal is to reduce the overall environmental impact of our building projects, we must begin paying more attention to the role automobiles play in these projects. Even the most environmentally responsible house—for example, an energy-independent, passive-solar house, built of salvaged and recycled materials, with graywater separation—will... Read more

Steven Winter Associates, Inc., of Norwalk, Connecticut, has been awarded a grant through the U.S. Department of Energy’s 1995 Small Business Innovative Research program to design advanced modular townhouses for urban infill sites. The company has been charged with designing townhouses that employ renewable energy and energy conservation... Read more

The company uses Norwegian manufacturing equipment to produce 4’ x 8’ (1200 mm x 2400 mm) panels in 1⁄4” (6 mm) and 1⁄8” (3 mm) thicknesses. Thicker, 1⁄2” (13 mm) panels were initially produced as well, but... Read more

With the Internet distribution this past August of a draft synthesis report by the three Working Groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suddenly global warming is back in the news. The report concludes that “the observed increase [in global temperature] over the last century (0.3°C–0.6°C... Read more

A few years ago, construction waste management and job-site source separation would have been considered nearly synonymous. It makes sense, after all, that if the materials have more value when separated by type, we should try to avoid mixing them together in the first place. While source separation still makes sense for many jobs and for... Read more

Environmental Building Consultants, 312 A Jefferson Ave., Cheltenham, PA 19012-2021; 215/663-1611, 215/663-1637 (fax), ehouse@omni.voicenet.com (e-mail); $50 for PC or Macintosh diskette containing database and software to run it.

This initial release of an IAQ products database contains about 450 listings... Read more

As you might imagine, information about new building products comes into the

EBN office all the time. When a new product strikes our fancy, we extract what information we can from manufacturers, we play with samples (often mutilating them in the process), we talk with any users we can track... Read more

How can we be confident that a particular manufacturer or company is committed to environmental improvements? There are certification systems for specific environmental claims, or for particular products, but as the best management practices and environmental goals evolve, how do we know that the... Read more

now being manufactured in Perrytown, Texas, can be used in place of both framing and drywall in partition walls. At $19 each for 4’ by 8’ (1200 mm by 2400 mm) panels, they are very competitive with conventional stud framing within a reasonable shipping distance from the plant. The panels... Read more

Building Industry Professionals for Environmental Responsibility (BIPER) is a new lobbying group founded to counter the frequently anti-environmental message governments receive from mainstream industry organizations. Annual membership is $35. Three levels of membership allow members to choose the frequency of contacts from the... Read more

I very much appreciate your recognition of the need for and efforts to identify priorities for “green building” (whatever that is). Such priorities can either be defined implicitly by the buildings a “green designer” creates or by some systematic process based on a hierarchy of environmental problems. Your... Read more

The DuPont Benedictus Awards for Innovation in Architectural Laminated Glass may have a significant environmental flavor in 1996 with the inclusion of two prominent “green” architects on the jury. Bob Berkebile of BNIM Architects in Kansas City, Missouri and Randolph Croxton, Croxton Collaborative Architects, New York City, have both been... Read more

Voluntary certification of product environmental claims is a useful option, but it does little to prevent bogus claims by other manufacturers. A 1990 California law attempts to address this problem by establishing legal definitions for the terms “ozone friendly,” “biodegradable,” “photodegradable,” “recyclable,” and “recycled.” Companies are... Read more

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