GreenClips.33 10.25.95 FABRIC SAILS AND SKYLIGHTS Sunlight is more liability than amenity in the Arizona desert climate. Architect Will Bruder devised ways to reduce harsh glare and solar heat gain but keep daylight and views at the new Phoenix Central Library. On the glazed north facade, Teflon-coated acrylic fabric sails shade the glass and reduce glare. The vertical sails block the sun between March and September when it rises north of east and sets north of west. Nine skylights diffuse daylight through the library's central atrium. Each skylight has motorized, mirrored louvers that reflect light into the building. A second set of fixed louvers below the mirrored ones blocks the midday sun. Six roof-mounted sensors measure sky brightness and feed data to computers that control the angle of the mirrored louvers. -Architecture, October 1995, p. 107, by Raul A. Barreneche. POLLUTION = INEFFICIENCY Pollution is often a form of economic waste. When companies discharge scrap, harmful substances, or energy into the environment as pollution they may have used resources incompletely, inefficiently, or ineffectively. Focusing on the static cost impact of environmental regulation, managers ignore potential gains from improving resource productivity. Companies regularly find innovative solutions to pressure from competitors, customers, and regulators. Innovation applied to environmental pressure allows companies to use raw materials and energy more productively, create better products, or improve product yields - offsetting the cost of improving environmental quality. -Harvard Business Review, September/October 1995, p. 120, by Michael E. Porter and Claas van der Linde. BACKYARD WETLANDS Homeowners and communities fed up with over development, contaminated groundwater, and overflowing septic tanks are turning to constructed wetlands as an alternative to conventional sewage treatment. Wetlands plants like cattails, reeds, and bamboo purify waste water by absorbing and assimilating harmful substances. Sam and Wendy Hitt built a wetlands in their Santa Fe, New Mexico backyard. Instead of a conventional drain or leach field, a lined bed layered with water, gravel, and vegetation receives waste water from their septic tank. They use purified water from the bed for drip-water irrigation. Most of the estimated 800 to 3,000 individual wetlands systems are in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana - states with detailed guidelines. In Indiana, backyard wetlands are officially experimental. Yet a contaminated groundwater crisis prompted the LaGrange County Department of Public Health to start a constructed wetlands program for single family homes last month. Backyard wetlands cost about two and a half times that of a conventional system. But larger ecological treatment plants may offer a cost advantage to small communities - a study found that they cost less to construct than conventional sewage treatment plants. Between 400 and 500 communities have built wetlands on a broader scale. - The New York Times, October 12, 1995, p. B1, by Patricia Leigh Brown. EARTHSHIPS An Earthship is a self-sufficient home constructed of recycled tires and aluminum cans. Architect Mike Reynolds developed the idea 25 years ago. Three Earthship communities near Taos, New Mexico have about 15 homes each. Tires packed with earth form three-foot thick foundations and exterior walls. Their thermal mass helps to heat and cool the homes. An earth berm shelters the north side. U-shaped rooms open to a corridor that runs along south-facing windows. Interior walls consist of aluminum cans covered with concrete. Photovoltaic panels power the Earthships - in some, propane fuels cooking and wood stoves provide additional heat. Rain water is collected on the roof and solar heated. -In Business, September/October, p. 40, by Robert Steuteville. INTELLIGENT EXTERIORS German architects and engineers are leading efforts to design building envelopes that actively regulate light and ventilation for comfort and energy conservation. German legislation and subsidies encourage environmentally responsible design. Environmental concerns aside, some German designers anticipate that new technologies will be profitable in 10 to 20 years -today's R&D will ensure their share of a future global design market. The RWEAG headquarters in Essen is one of a sophisticated new breed of environmentally sensitive skyscrapers. Its curtain wall consists of a 20-inch buffer zone between two glass planes. In winter the buffer zone captures solar heat that office occupants can admit by sliding open the inner glass wall. In summer the buffer zone exhausts excess heat from internal loads and the sun. - Architectural Record, October 1995, p. 70, by Mary Pepchinski and James S. Russell. EARTH CENTRE The Earth Centre intends to become a world center for sustainable development. The first phase opened last July on a former colliery site near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, UK. The center will be an educational visitor attraction and research forum focused on sustainable issues, commerce, industry and science, agriculture, design, construction, and the arts. A small farm demonstrating various organic agricultural, aquacultural, and horticultural techniques is now open. Remaining phases of the 320-acre, 125 million pound plan will be completed over the next five years. About 40 percent the Earth Centre's budget will come from the Millennium Commission. - EcoDesign, vol. 3, no. 4, p. 5, by Jonathan Brooke. NOBEL PRIZE FOR OZONE RESEARCH Two Americans and a Dutch citizen living in Germany received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their pioneering work explaining the chemical processes that deplete the earth's ozone shield. The winners are Dr. F. Sherwood Rowland of the University of California-Irvine, Dr. Mario Molina of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dr. Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. The award vindicates the two Americans. Industry attacked them in 1974 when they first advanced their thesis that the continued use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as refrigerants, plastic foams, and aerosol propellants would seriously damage the ozone layer. The thesis still has its critics, including Republicans in Congress. They have introduced legislation to overturn US participation in the Montreal Protocol, the 1987 international ban on producing CFCs. -The New York Times, October 12, 1995, p. 1, by William K. Stevens.