Archive for the 'Product Talk' Category

More Toilet Flushing Fun

Regular readers might remember the toilet-flushing video from March that showed ridiculous quantities of carrots, chess pieces, Gummi bears, hot dogs, plastic letters and numbers, grapes, golf balls, and dog food getting flushed. Fun, but it didn’t q…

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Men Should Pee Sitting Down

Men should pee sitting down.

Now before you call me a strident feminist, let me say that I’m backed up on this one by male colleagues and the reasons aren’t what you think. I’m not arguing for toilet equality here.

I’m talking about urine-separ…

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How Green is Polystyrene Insulation? EBN’s Position, and How It Affects GreenSpec-Listed Products

Chart from the feature (requires login):Human Health and Environmental Concerns with Polystyrene Constituents(click image to enlarge)

The August EBN feature article, "Polystyrene Insulation: Does it Belong in a Green Building?" (requires…

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Avoid Polystyrene Insulation

Polystyrene Molecular StructureLet me start by saying that insulation is an absolutely critical component of buildings. I like insulation and I like a lot of insulation. In northern climates, I recommend a minimum insulation value of R-40 in walls, f…

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Committee tightens up NSF-140 carpet standard

Ah, if only it were possible to be a fly-on-the-wall in every committee for every standard… I know this is a fantasy only a standards-geek could have, and is one of those fantasies you don’t really want to actualize, but there’s no doubt much of th…

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Considerations of Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs)

ICFs (Insulating Concrete Forms) are permanent, stay-in-place forms for making insulated poured-concrete walls, floors, and roof decks.

Most of them are made with expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam produced with a non-ozone-depleting blowing agent (u…

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New to Green Building? Try GBA.

Recently, I broke one of my long-standing rules and blogged about something BuildingGreen-related at my own blog. My Costanzian fears were indeed warranted, and I’ve been egged on to cross-post it to the Live blog. Here she is, warts and all: my unva…

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BuildingGreen and ecoScorecard Announce Partnership

The press release says,

This partnership pairs a respected and independent source of green building information with a platform that enhances the usefulness of green product information. The GreenSpec Directory helps the green building community f…

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Wanted by Chemical Industry: Young, Pregnant Spokesperson for Bisphenol-A

On Friday, May 19, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal published a damning story based on the leaked minutes of a private strategy meeting of food-packaging executives and chemical industry lobbyists that took place in Washington DC the previous day. The …

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The Lifecycle Building Challenge

A design competition for professionals and students, the Lifecycle Building Challenge is sponsored by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the American Institute of Architects, and West Coast Green. The competition is focused on design for adap…

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