Glassmaking in America has been in decline for at least a decade as manufacturers have moved production to China and other emerging economies. But can the green-buildings movement spark a revival? Makers of a new class of energy-efficient “dynamic” windows are establishing factories in the United States. Helping to drive this growth spurt is a…
Last Sunday evening, in a nondescript Midwestern subdivision backing up to an Interstate highway, the sun carved an unfamiliar path past an unusual looking house. It was spring equinox all across the northern hemisphere, and for the first time since Deb and Ty Newell moved in just before Thanksgiving, the sun was setting behind their…
Green Building Chronicle member Neal Smith, of Helios South, cuts through some of the hyperbole about the upcoming ban on incandescent lightbulbs with a thoroughly reasonable take on the shift from traditional bulbs to compact fluorescents and other innovations. Basically, Neal channels Thomas Edison: Edison had a profoundly practical view of the way science works….
I recently attended an event at the Owens Corning insulation plant in Fairburn, Ga., about 45 minutes from my house. Being of the geeky sort, I always appreciate the opportunity to see big machines, so the factory tour piqued my interest, although, unfortunately, I was not allowed to take any pictures of the process. As…
I’ve been hearing about “smart” power strips for a while, and while I am pretty good about turning off the various electronics in my house on regular old manual power strips, I decided it was time to evaluate one of these advanced devices for myself. I purchased a TrickleStar unit for about $30 and set…
Another Greenbuild Expo is in the books, and based on the Twitter traffic (hashtag #greenbuild), people can’t stop talking about it, so I suppose it’s my turn to chime in. According to the USGBC, attendance was up slightly from last year. The show floor was huge, as always, although the arrangement did not feel crowded…
I didn’t get to go to Greenbuild 2010 a couple of weeks ago in Chicago. Maybe you didn’t either. Well, at least, our friends Walter Brown and Jodi Mansbach — both VPs over at Green Street Properties — brought back their list of “Top 10 Great New Products or Concepts We Encountered at Greenbuild 2010.”…
Here’s a sobering observation about BuildingGreen’s just released list of “2010 Top-10 Green Products”: None of them come from the Southeast and only half are made by U.S. companies. The list, which is culled each year by BuildingGreen’s ongoing product research, was released yesterday at the 2010 Greenbuild conference in Chicago. It includes some pretty…
For the first time here, Green Building Chronicle is publishing an investigative report from ProPublica, a national investigative journalism nonprofit. This article is a followup on a project that ProPublica’s been pursuing with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, but it has a strong connection to homebuilding in Georgia. By Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica, and Aaron Kessler, Sarasota Herald-Tribune…
