This week Kohl’s issued its first annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) report, which discusses the company’s energy efficiency and green building efforts.

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From environmental conservation, supplier diversity to community development, Lowe’s 2011 CSR report is full of highlights.

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Johnson Controls, a $40 billion company with 162,000 employees across the globe, builds on its CSR track record with the release of its 2011 Business and Sustainability Report.

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A former ad-exec in North Carolina, Nancy Welsh wants to stop the tear-down epidemic and use the resource of America’s boarded up homes to help solve the housing crisis. Her group Builders of Hope has repeated the recipe in several US cities.

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Maybe it’s time to start thinking differently about green and smart buildings. Expand the skyline, so to speak. A better approach — and one that is gaining increasing attention and study — would be to plan and work for green, sustainable and carbon-neutral cities.

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Msheireb Properties is building a 35-hectare project in Doha, Qatar, that will infuse traditional Arabian architecture with modern green building techniques.

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When it comes to details, Dubai is a global leader and the quality of life and business climate both have tremendous benefits. But when it comes to overall design, Dubai could use some CPR.

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many big changes [ in clean-tech] come in the second chapter we are now in, where software and IT will be critical; it’s now about the “energy internet.” This involves innovations around using energy more efficiently: How do you move it around? how do you push energy back to the grid? and how do you start making money? “IT has the ability to unlock the big changes.”

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Dwell Earth has high aspirations for a humble building material: Dirt.

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Kaiser Permanente announced that it is converting its IV medical equipment to safer alternatives that do not contain PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) and DEHP (di-2-ethyl hexyl phthalate).  Both these chemicals are widely used in plastics but have been shown to harm human and environmental health.

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Despite UPS headquarters being 20 years old, the company just announced that it has become the first in the package delivery and logistics industry to gain LEED Gold Certification from the US Green Building Council. UPS submitted the building for review in May 2011 (shortly after the appointment of Chief Sustainability Officer Scott Wicker) and [...]

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Accor, a leading hotel chain that owns a bevy of chains including Motel 6, is ramping up their corporate social responsibility efforts. Employee engagement and water stewardship are among the initiatives.

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Whether they benefit from visionary leaders, flourishing social enterprise, or commitment from community activists, the following 10 cities are well worth a visit to experience their transformation and resilience.

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Building occupant behavior is the holy grail of energy efficiency. Environmental psychologist Doug McKenzie-Mohr describes strategies for crafting behavior change marketing campaigns. Several college campuses have successfully implemented similar campaigns to induce their students to more efficient behavior.

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The first four chapters of the Sustainable Land Development Code (SLDC) were released to the Santa Fe, NM Board of County Commissioners (BCC) and the public at the December 13, 2011 BCC Meeting. The SLDC will implement the goals, policies, and strategies of the adopted Sustainable Growth Management Plan (SGMP), which was approved in November [...]

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The sustainability movement is making waves in North Carolina, at least that’s the impression one might have gotten from the budding enthusiasm at yesterday’s GreenNC: Building for a Sustainable Future in Durham, North Carolina. Mayor Bill Bell opened up the conference by bragging about his Bull City, which has become a hub for social and [...]

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Avon’s CSR report, released earlier this week, touts a bevy of achievements and promises to address issues including deforestation, governance and philanthropy.

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Construction projects should not be considered Green or sustainable unless they have applied equal consideration to all resources used. In Dubai, the labor resources are treated terribly regardless of the “green” nature of the development, this can be changed by incorporating fair and equitable treatment of construction workers into existing sustainable development laws and guidelines.

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This short list of green building products was selected from a pool of products nominated by our readers and the readers of Sustainable Industries. A panel of expert judges sifted through the nominees to determine the top ten of the bunch. Winners were selected based on environmental performance, scalability/market impact, innovativeness, design aesthetic, value and [...]

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By Eric Flamer The US Green Building Council reports that as of March 3, 2011, 91 hotel properties have achieved LEED certification, with an additional 1100 projects registering with LEED and working towards certification. From my employment experience in the Washington, DC convention hotel market, the truth is that most of the buildings dedicated to hospitality [...]

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In recent years, much has been made of the energy savings and emissions reduction associated with switching to CFLs. What if every moment the sun was out you could go completely without electric lighting? Daylighting is an often touted solution. In my case, having skylights in our office meant hiding from it as the sun [...]

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The assets essential for living are air, water and food.  How do we systematically invest in these, our most important assets?  In this interview at SOCAP 2011, Dave Chen, the founder of Equilibrium Capital Group talks about directing capital towards management funds in green real estate, land management, water, energy, agriculture and forestry.  His group [...]

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This post examines U.S. prospects for leading in green information technology, as a growing component of the broader clean tech market.

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Two excellent building energy efficiency reports were released last month. The first is from the Environmental Defense Fund entitled Show Me the Money: Energy Efficiency Financing Barriers and Opportunities. The second from the Institute for Market Transformation is a comprehensive look at Building Energy Transparency: A Framework for Implementing Energy Rating & Disclosure Policy

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Something impressive is developing on the green building front in Belgium. And it has nothing to do with LEED or some grandiose skyscraper. It’s a home that does much more than house people. It will enable more people to own their own homes, while increasing their self reliance, and reducing the impact they and their [...]

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By David Jaber Facility assessments (investigating a building’s energy, water, material usage and waste, similar to LEED O+M or other facility greening audits) can provide significant value in multiple ways. For one, when done at multiple facilities of a similar type, assessments allow us to benchmark across these similar facilities in the hopes of identifying [...]

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By: Tim Eyre, Extra Space Storage The robust global environmentalism movement has impacted virtually all aspects of American life. And while green building practices have been utilized in single family construction for some time now, developers in the multi-family sector have only recently started taking notice, recognizing that the added cost of implementing eco-friendly design [...]

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Rolling up to the Earthships world headquarters in Taos, New Mexico is like stumbling upon an alien planet – a striking, stark desert backdrop with funky colorful bounds dotting the landscape– which as you get closer you soon realize are actual people’s houses. An Earthship is a thermal mass, passive solar home that allows one [...]

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HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced this week that their agencies launched a grant program that will help build more sustainably-built and transit-friendly communities.

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In the unassuming rural community of Putney, Vermont, students and faculty at the Putney School are proud of their new field house. Not only does the new building expand the opportunities for the students at the private high school, it’s also the only net-zero school building in the country, and one of only a handful [...]

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