Live from Greenbuild
USGBC estimates there are 28,000 attendees at this year’s Greenbuild.
Newest Greenbuild announcements (updated 11/12/2009):
Sierra Club & USGBC launch ‘Green Buildings for Cool Cities’ project
USGBC selects recipients of Greenbuild scholarship program and USGBC Young Leader Awards Program
New MonierLifetile interactive tool shows energy cost and C02 savings
New cold weather spray foam for THERMAX Wall System speeds job-site construction
Hydrotech announces two additions to the garden roof assembly
Green building to support nearly 8 million U.S. jobs over next four years
Johnson Controls exceeds goal of 500 LEED APs in North America
Schindler’s intuitive PORT technology customizes the ride for greater efficiency, energy savings
Lutron Electronics awards $15,000 for school sustainability challenge
EMerge Alliance passes 50-member milestone, builds support for new DC power distribution standard
EnOcean Alliance reaches milestone toward becoming an international standard
Department of Defense selects Worrell Water’s Living Machine System
KONE sees drop in hydraulic elevator installations, EcoDisc technology gains
Some green building analysis software announcements from Jeff "BIMBoy" Yoders:
Autodesk adds 1.6 million weather stations to green building studio
Bentley adds gbXML support to Hevacomp V8i, automates LEED requirements
Marcello Manka, vice president and general manager of Underwriters’ Laboraties Environment, spoke to BD+C about UL’s new environmental certification processes. "There’s a lot of greenwashing out there,” Manca said. "We want to get rid of some of the confusion and we believe our 115 years of certifying products gives us the credibility to do that."
Manca said UL will work with existing certification programs that it deems rigorous enough to certify green products, such as the ASTM standard for carpet which has already resulted in UL Environment-certified carpeting.
"We started looking at the market: Isn’t the future of the environment public safety? We started thinking that we’d probably be hypocritical if we stayed away from expanding our mission in this direction," Manca said.
UL Environment certification is available in two broad categories — building products and consumer goods. While specific evaluation criteria vary by category, Manca cited energy efficiency, recycled content, use of banned substances, and recyclability among the certification attributes UL will look for.
