GreenClips.188 03.27.02 WAL-MART FIGHTS LEED CERTIFICATION FOR PLANNED SAM'S CLUB The city of Madison, Wisconsin is attempting to force Wal-Mart Stores to build what may be the "greenest" megastore in America. But the retail giant is trying to avoid setting a national precedent with its proposed 130,000-square-foot Sam's Club on the city's far East Side, city officials said. Wal-Mart is fighting an unprecedented requirement for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification of the project by the U.S. Green Building Council and has offered the city $75,000, the cost of certification, to drop the requirement. The city's Urban Design Commission, frustrated with the bland design and landscaping of "big-box" stores and concerned about nearby wetlands, narrowly endorsed but sought many concessions for the Sam's Club. The commission wants special design features, almost 100 skylights and other natural light sources, energy efficiencies, landscaping to handle water runoff and more. Wal-Mart agrees to the requirements -- except certification, Wal-Mart attorney Ron Trachtenberg said. The requirements, especially independent certification, are intended to set a national precedent, said architect and UDC member Lou Host-Jablonski. But Wal-Mart doesn't want it known it will build a store to LEED standards, he said. Wisconsin State Journal, 14 Mar 2002, by Dean Mosiman. LIFE-CYCLE ASSESSMENT CHECKLIST FOR DESIGNERS Life-cycle assessment (LCA) considers the overall environmental performance of a product at every stage in the product's life, from raw material extraction or harvesting to its eventual disposal or reuse. While LCA is simple in concept, building professionals shouldn't attempt to perform their own full LCA studies unless they want to devote significant resources to making that endeavor a specialty. But there are many things building designers can do to improve the availability and usefulness of LCA data, such as encouraging product manufacturers to perform LCAs on their products and to make the results available. Also, designers should ask key questions about any LCA data, including: What are the sources of the data? What assumptions does it include? What are the uncertainty factors in the information? What is assumed about the product's maintenance requirements? Do the impact categories included in the results capture the important information? Whether or not reliable LCA results are available, building designers should always apply life-cycle thinking and critically review any product for information to support their choices. Finally, designers need to look at the whole building from a life-cycle perspective, with the aim of minimizing overall environmental impacts while optimizing performance. Environmental Building News, Mar 2002, p 1, by Nadav Malin. ARE TEAR-DOWNS A FORM OF SMART GROWTH? A politically incorrect view is spreading among some housing experts and urban planners: Tear-downs are good because they discourage sprawl. Some experts argue that tear-downs fulfill the principles of "smart growth" because they: don't eat up farmland and open space; lessen traffic congestion by keeping people who want big homes closer to cities where they work; revitalize older suburbs by bringing wealthy homeowners back; and encourage walking to the small downtowns, schools and parks often found in older suburbs. "Either way, these folks are building big homes," says Robert Lang of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. "You can have them do it where it does some good, or they can go on building them as they have been for years way out there where the corn grows." But the anti-sprawl benefits of tear-downs are not an easy sell. Like other development issues -- from growth boundaries around metropolitan areas to stricter zoning and construction moratoriums -- tear-downs pit old neighbors against new, preservationists against builders, the rich against the middle class. Local governments are caught in the middle, balancing property rights, concerns of longtime residents and the need to boost their tax base. Many communities have enacted "mansionization" ordinances to limit the height and size of new homes. In Glen Ellyn, Illinois, for example, where 60 homes were torn down last year, new houses can occupy no more than 20 percent of the lot. USA Today, 13 Mar 2002, by Haya El Nasser. COLLINS TO PRODUCE CERTIFIED HARDBOARD SIDING Collins Products, LLC has introduced an FSC-certified version of its TruWood siding. TruWood is an engineered hardboard siding, produced from wood chips, phenol formaldehyde binder, paraffin wax, acrylic sealants, and finishes. The new TruWood siding, which is certified under FSC's partial-content rules, includes 32 percent certified fiber content and a minimum of 50 percent recycled or recovered wood fiber. Along with being less expensive, TruWood siding has a number of advantages over cedar, says Cami Waner of Collins Products. "TruWood holds paint much longer, has no knots, no raised grain, and does not require as much paint to adequately cover," she says. TruWood siding is distributed by Weyerhaeuser in the western US. The first FSC-certified fiber is expected to ship this spring, with a price premium of no more than 10 percent. 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