Photo – Greg Habermann (Remixed under CC BY 2.0)After years of living with a nice-looking but rather uncomfortable daybed in our living room, my family and I went shopping for a new sofa. We explored a range of styles and configurations, trying to find something that looked good, would be cozy, durable, and fit in our rather small space. Oh, and we also wanted to avoid bringing toxic and ineffective flame retardant chemicals into our home.

Växjö, Sweden embraced the U.N's Agenda 21 and is now a model of sustainability

Växjö Energi AB's wood-chip-fired CHP plant. My host is standing in front of a large steam turbine. Click to enlarge.
Photo Credit: Alex Wilson

My blog last week about Kansas and efforts to outlaw any mention or promotion of sustainability was so depressing (to write as well read) that I needed to find a more uplifting sequel. I needed to remind myself—and readers—that even if some politicians in Kansas don’t want to make the world a better place for their children and grandchildren, that’s not a universal attitude.

There are lots of towns, cities, and countries around the world where planning for the future is a priority and whose sustainability stories are truly inspirational.

I’ll report here on one of those places: Växjö, Sweden (the approximate pronunciation is “VECK’ shuh”), which is often called Europe’s greenest city. Five years ago I had the good fortune to spend a few days in this municipality of 85,000, with an urban core of 60,000.

Fear of Agenda 21 fuels a bill to ban sustainability planning in the state of Kansas

The Konza Prairie in northeastern Kansas.
Photo Credit: Bill Johnson

I love many things about Kansas—from the tall-grass prairies in the Flint Hills where I’ve hiked through rolling hills overlooking grazing bison to the dramatic waterfowl migrations in the Cheyenne Bottoms region in the western part of the state. But a bill currently in committee in the Kansas Legislature makes me wonder whether these natural treasures will be around for future generations to enjoy. Reading about this legislation simply left my jaw agape. At issue is whether the Kansas legislature should outlaw anything that even remotely encourages sustainability planning.

Orca house was a top finisher in a design compeition for Aleutian natives, thanks in part to cultural research.
Rendering: David Munford

This is the story of a design competition, the goal of which was to design an affordable, replicable, sustainable and inspiring home for a family in Atka, an island in the Aleutian Islands chain in Alaska. Competitor teams were to make the house compliant with the Living Building Challenge.

With the HPD now available as a recognized format, design professionals have started to request its use by manufacturers.

[Editor's Note: This guest post comes to us courtesy of Russell Perry, FAIA, managing director of SmithGroupJJR's Washington, D.C., office.]

The global movement towards transparency gains steady momentum. In the design and construction world, the 2012 Greenbuild conference saw the launch of the Health Product Declaration (HPD) format, the launch of the eagerly awaited Declare format, and USGBC CEO Rick Fedrizzi’s spirited defense of practitioners’ need to know what chemical exposure comes with material choices.

Read the article, take the quiz, and sit back while your CEUs get automatically reported to AIA, GBCI, BPI, and NARI.

BuildingGreen is now directly reporting continuing education (CE) hours completed through our website to the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) for LEED Accredited Professionals and LEED Green Associates who use our course catalog to maintain their credentials.

When completing CE hours on BuildingGreen.com, you can rest assured that your hours will be automatically reported with no further action on your part. BuildingGreen has long offered this convenience for AIA members and continues to do so. Reporting to GBCI took effect January 1, 2013.

To take advantage of this, you should double-check your account profile, however.

Check that your BuildingGreen account information enables automated reporting to AIA, GBCI, and more.

Introducing the Resilient Design Institute: a new nonprofit organization that has been created in Brattleboro.

A massive ice storm, in which up to four inches of ice were deposited in early January, 1998, destroyed over 100 power distribution towers and tens of thousands of wooden utility poles, leaving millions without power for up to three weeks in Eastern Canada.
Photo Credit: Hydro Quebec

Some 27 years ago, following a five-year stint as director of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (which was then based in Brattleboro), I launched my own company focusing on information about environmentally responsible design and construction. That company, now called BuildingGreen and with a staff of 18, remains a leading player in the green building world—a trusted source of information on green building products, the place to find objective news on happenings in the green building world, an independent voice on the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System.

It’s a great place to work and I’m thrilled to serve as executive editor at BuildingGreen and be able to research and write about all the cool stuff that our subscribers need to know. Nadav Malin has been doing a superb job at running the company since I handed the reins to him several years ago.

My shift away from company management at BuildingGreen has given me the space to focus on where we’re heading in the building industry and what sort of changes will be needed to solve the many challenges we face, led by climate change. My sabbatical last year, which I began with a contemplative 1,900-mile bicycle trip through the Southwest, provided an opportunity to delve deeply into this thinking.

There's already been a lot of excellent debate around the new LEED Pilot Credit 43. I find myself agreeing with both sides! Here's where I stand in what may be the eye of the storm.

LEED is supposed to be about buildings--and market transformation

On the one hand, LEED is fundamentally supposed to be about designing high-performing green buildings, and product and material selection is one integrated component. It's not supposed to be about cobbling together a building out of greener products and materials. If the core purpose gets lost amidst the debate surrounding one material (yes, I'm talking FSC/SFI), we all lose.

On the other hand, LEED is at this point a major market driver for green building products. We need to use all the levers we can find to create truly sustainable manufacturing and sourcing if we're ever going to make it through these pivotal times into a vibrant, thriving, truly sustainable world. So we ought to use LEED for all it's worth in pushing real substantive improvements down through the supply chain.

New, improved guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about how to deal with a broken compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) are intended to take some of the mystery out of the purchase and use of CFLs. But by suggesting a response that borders on Hazmat lockdown, the guidelines may potentially add to consumers' uncertainties.

While CFLs have become more popular and less expensive in recent years, they still enjoy only around a quarter of the total market share for residential light bulbs--perhaps in part because of exaggerated reports about mercury toxicity and the difficulty of cleanup and disposal, some of which have prompted debunking sites like Snopes.com to clear the air. The average bulb contains around 5 mg of mercury, about 100 times less than an old-fashioned oral thermometer.

Still, mercury in any quantity should not be taken lightly, particularly in a home where children or pets live. Mercury in fish and other foods is a serious issue, but mercury vapor is even more toxic. Ingested mercury is not well absorbed by the body, while in contrast, inhaled mercury enters the bloodstream readily.

Alex Wilson, the founder of our company and our current executive editor (i.e., my boss), is being named the 2010 Hanley Award winner in a special event here at Greenbuild 2010 tomorrow. In recognition of this achievement, and to better understand how this innovative, always-curious visionary looks at the world, I recently asked him 10 questions. Here's the conversation.