E, The Environmental Magazine

Despite objections, the National Park Service will continue to allow "bioprospecting" in the parks - a practice some environmentalists say opens the door to exploitation, but which scientists contend has very little environmental impact.

With debris from construction and demolition of buildings accounting for nearly one-half of all solid waste in the U.S., some entrepreneurs are looking at this landfill fodder as a viable source of reconstruction materials -- and a source of revenue.

The town of Ogden, Utah, hopes to beef up its economy by promoting itself as an outdoor recreation capital. But some in the community fear that the tourism campaign may further encourage exploitation of the area's decreasingly pristine environment.

Arlington, Virginia, and Silver Spring, Maryland, are two cities in the rapidly growing Washington D.C. metro area that are bucking the trend of handling growth by sprawl and moving towards Smart Growth policies.

With populations steadily increasing in India and China, the two countries are looking to green building methods to reduce their energy use as they urbanize and move more closely to Western energy consumption patterns.

A classic Art Deco building in Downtown Baltimore that stood vacant for 15 years has been renovated and updated into one of the area's most extensive uses of green building techniques.

Despite the wave of green building techniques that have appeared over recent years, the energy efficiency of new houses is being offset by a rising average size of single family homes, which has increased by almost 1,500 square feet since 1950.