Eco-building’s

The marching order to “leave nothing but footprints” enlisted an infantry of green builders this season, before our collective attention turned to security. While our man from the Midland Petroleum Club (aka George Bush) dissed environmental causes and dismissed global warming, — before his attention, too, was turned — a growing number of land-shapers and place-makers began to cast an ecological eye toward planning and construction. Whether labeled green building, sustainable architecture, organic architecture or what one inclusionist calls “The Whole Building,” this new constituency of ecologically-attuned and everyday builders has begun to consider environmental values in building inside and out – from the materials in the making, to the siting of the structure, to the energy it consumes.

The First Healthy Building

The first Healthy Building News for 2007 is a week late. On the eve of publication last week, our scheduled topic was rendered moot by the US EPA’s decision to prohibit the residential use of a toxic pressure treated wood formula known as ACC (acid copper chromate). Its main ingredient, hexavalent chromium, is the human carcinogen that made Erin Brockovich a household name.

The urgency of the pending EPA decision had itself bumped our original topic for the 2007 inaugural issue — highlighting the positive implications of the ambitious USGBC initiatives unveiled last November at GreenBuild. The EPA’s surprise but welcome decision brings our thesis full circle: the growing weight of the evidence suggests that the climate of the green building movement is changing, for the better.

Consider this: the US EPA did not move to restrict the use of arsenic-based pressure treated wood until nearly a decade after the green building movement’s journal of record, Environmental Building News, suggested it should be phased out.

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