上周，我在地球日反映了and how concern for the environment inspired me in school and then [no-glossary]led[/no-glossary] to my focus on renewable energy starting in the mid-1970s. This brought me to Brattleboro in 1980 to work for the东北可持续能源协会，我从1980年到1985年做过。

接着说：

1985年，我准备离开非营利性世界，看看我是否可以将其专注于写作作为职业 - 继续关注环境。在与新墨西哥州太阳能协会和NESEA任职期间，我一直在写几本出版物，最著名轻型杂志，但我不知道我是否可以从中谋生。

自由职业者的写作是艰难的一排

Indeed, when I started out on my own I worked two days a week for a local restoration builder. As my writing picked up I gradually shifted to writing full time. I was doing a mix of freelance writing for six or seven magazines, but learned pretty quickly that freelance writing is a tough row to hoe. I supplemented that writing with various technical writing projects for state energy offices, utility companies, nonprofit organizations, and a few manufacturers.

一个早期的项目是为马萨诸塞州奥杜邦协会撰写一系列家庭能源改善小册子，这导​​致了撰写Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings为了美国节能经济理事会in 1989. That little book was very well received, ultimately selling several hundred thousand copies and opening the door to lots of other writing opportunities in the energy field.

Teaming up with Nadav

在此期间，我的主要写作项目之一是能源制作的家庭计划的节能建设指南，该计划是马萨诸塞州的一项公用事业资助的计划。随着工作负荷的增加，我雇用了支持人员来帮助特定项目。这些员工之一是1991年的纳达夫·马林（Nadav Malin）。

As my freelance writing career grew, more and more of my assignments were on mainstream building practices and were driven by magazine advertisers: “Alex, we need an article on ‘exterior insulation and finish systems’ and, by the way, it should mention these four companies…” Whenever I got a chance I would write about the intersections of building practices and the environment — whether relating to ozone depletion, global warming, renewable energy, indoor air quality, or water conservation. But these opportunities weren’t as frequent as I wanted.

一些有关绿色建筑的文章

在1990年或’91建筑学我是一位贡献编辑的杂志，决定在“绿色建筑”上制作一个特刊，这是一个相对较新的概念。我写了几篇有关该问题的文章，这些文章受到了良好的接待，甚至赢得了我记得的奖项。我开始怀疑是否可能有专门针对绿色设计和建筑的出版物的利基市场。

Nadav and I talked about this for a while, and in early 1992, we decided to give it a shot. If we succeeded, we could stabilize our revenue through subscriptions and be less dependent on the whims of other magazine editors and on contract work that took effort to drum up and could not always be counted on.

EBN出生

在那一年的春季，我们给Nesea的数千名成员宣布了一份新出版物，环境建筑新闻并邀请他们以特殊的租赁用户利率订阅。我们对发布或直接邮件一无所知。我们认为是否有兴趣，这封信的接收者将发送支票。如果没有，我们不会在实验中投入太多。我们可以减少损失，并继续进行下一个接触编写项目。

但是，瞧，我们对那封邮件的回应有了惊人的14％的回应！（这仅仅是今天的任何直接邮件活动都出色的十分之一。我们希望能够说出我们想要的关于特定产品和技术的任何内容，我和Nadav选择不携带广告。

环境建筑新闻（EBN）成长，满足了新兴绿色建筑社区的需求，我们很快在所有五十个州和十几个国外都有订阅者。当时，我们的业务被称为West River Communications，但是当我们启动了第一个网站（我相信1995年）时，我们将公司名称更改为E Build，Inc。，以反映我们的Ebuild.com网站的名称。（后来，我们将出售ebuild.com并使用收益将我们的绿色产品数据库在线放置）。

自推出以来EBN，我们逐渐发展了公司，重命名为BuildingGreen，Inc。（出售我们的Ebuild.com域之后），并推出了与绿色建筑产品和LEED评级系统。即使是恐怖的时间，也是出版的时间。我们是台式机出版的早期采用者，并且在全球网络上很早就采用了游戏。在整个历史上，我们还通过推广广告（大多数出版物的主要收入）并为网络传递内容收取收费。

We have continued a mix of our own publishing and contract work, and we’ve been able to focus our contract work in ways that strengthened our in-house expertise in green building. Over the past two and a half decades, we’ve done work for the U.S. Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, HUD, the U.S. General Services Administration, the American Institute of Architects, the U.S. Green Building Council, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and several national energy research laboratories. We even participated in theGreening of the White House克林顿政府期间的项目。

与Taunton Press合作创建GBA

两年来，在2008年至2010年初的大部分时间里，我们与汤顿出版社（Taunton Press）合作，在此期间创建了GreenBuildingAdvisor。GBA是一个巨大的资源，但它是在建筑行业崩溃的时候推出的，并且在建筑经济疲软的艰难现实中，GBA以与原始合作伙伴关系挑战的方式发生了变化。Building Gradegreen和Taunton都同意分道障碍是有道理的，两年前我们非常友好地分离了。BuildingGreen再次成为一家独立公司，Taunton Press完全拥有GBA的所有权 - 尽管我们继续参与一定程度的参与（包括此博客）。

与往常一样，在我们两个半十年的历史中，建筑格林一直忠于我们作为一家以任务为驱动的公司的最初愿景，专注于环境。我们的corporate mission statement读，部分：

“…to facilitate transformation of the North American building industry into a force for local, regional and global environmental protection; for preservation and restoration of the natural environment; and for creation of healthy indoor environments.”

We are now a 20-person company serving builders, architects, researchers, educators, and policy makers nationwide and even internationally. We work collaboratively with many partners around the country. While two of our employees work remotely and come into the office only occasionally, most of us are located in one of the historic Estey Organ Buildings on Birge Street in Brattleboro. Nadav took over as president several years ago and is ably leading BuildingGreen into the future as we try to keep making a difference.

读者可以在我们的有关建筑网格和我们的产品上了解更多信息网站。

Alex is founder ofBuildingGreen，Inc。和执行编辑环境建筑新闻。He coauthored the just-published BuildingGreen special report,Better Window Decisions, which provides clear guidance on window selection. To keep up with Alex’s latest articles and musings, you cansign up for his Twitter feed。