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Bill Walsh | June 15, 2004 | Materials
This summer's offering in the long running serial-action- drama series known as the PVC Debate comes from Europe. The new release, "Life Cycle Assessment of PVC and of Principal Competing Materials" by a consulting consortium led by PE Europe GmbH, is being hyped by PVC manufacturers as a blockbuster prequel to the much anticipated ep...
Bill Walsh | June 01, 2004 | Policies
The Environmental Building News reports that the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) board of directors voted "not to create a new membership category for trade associations" while at the same time voting "to increase the dialog with trade associations to better understand issues of concern to them and demonstrate that the Council is...
Bill Walsh | May 17, 2004 | Materials
Armstrong World Industries’ motto is "Your Ideas Become Reality." Here’s the Healthy Building Network’s idea for how Armstrong can turn tragedy into progress, transform the resilient flooring market, and rehabilitate its greenwashing reputation. Armstrong was a major customer of the Formosa Plastics vinyl plant in Illiop...
Sandra Steingraber | May 03, 2004 | Materials
Lessons From The Formosa PVC Plant, Illiopolis, Illinois One morning ten years ago, I was at work on a book about environmental health when the phone rang. It was my Uncle Roy. He wanted me to know that a developer had come to town peddling a plan to construct a giant waste incinerator in the cornfield next to his own. What the man was planning to...
Bill Walsh | April 19, 2004 | Policies
For inspiration this Earth Day, April 22, look to the green building movement. In word and deed, green building professionals have shown us the unbearable lightness of being green. Start by reading the comments to the US Green Building Council concerning Council governance (trade association membership) and LEED standards (a disputed PVC credit).[1...
Bill Walsh | April 05, 2004 | Materials
Hyperbole? No. PVC manufacturing consumes in excess of 40 per cent of the chlorine gas produced in this country, making it the nation's single largest user of the deadly chemical. By comparison, 5 percent of the nation's chlorine gas is used to disinfect water - and that includes sewage treatment.[1] Chlorine gas kills and maims in a manner...
Bill Walsh | March 22, 2004 | Policies
To the green building cognoscenti Montreal and Kyoto are documents, not destinations. They can add Stockholm to the list of world-class cities associated forever with the world's most pressing environmental challenges. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) targets 12 priority toxic chemicals for elimination including...
Bill Walsh | March 07, 2004 | Policies
In 1995, one year after Greenpeace documented widespread, unreported dioxin contamination at Louisiana vinyl manufacturing plants, the vinyl industry pledged $1 million to Habitat for Humanity in Louisiana. This earned the Vinyl Institute the right to use the Habitat logo, identify themselves as "partners" and call vinyl the "materia...
Bill Walsh | February 25, 2004 | Policies
On February 18, 2004 the US Green Building Council (USGBC) PVC Task Group held its first public meeting to consider whether to extend credit in its LEED™ green building rating program to buildings that avoid PVC plastic, also known as vinyl.
MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award winner Wilma Subra delivered the first presentation....
