Grow your own roof to stop climate change?

Not long ago - about four blog posts ago, in fact - I wrote about how painting your roof white could save one tonne of carbon dioxide emissions.

I’ve just discovered that having a green roof could lead to similar eco benefits. Last week, in my home town of Brighton, the city council ran their annual sustainability conference and the big talking point was the city’s bid to be a Unesco biosphere reserve. That basically means that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation will recognise that Brighton and Hove has an excellent balance between people and nature.

One of the best ways of finding that balance, apparently, is to stick a whole load of plant-life on the roofs of our buildings. Pretty much all buildings can have a green roof, and they can be planted with anything from sedum to a veg patch (but consult a professional first).

It seems so simple, and I was amazed to find out that by increasing the level of greenery in our urban areas we can reduce the average temperature, improve air quality, increase biodiversity and increase the number of places for people to go and unwind.

I then found this story about a study showing there are 61 trees per person on the planet, but that there should be 305!

Good news then that we’ve started selling trees, but I guess we should add sedum as well, alongside that white roof paint?

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This entry was written by Nigel and posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 12:35 pm and filed under Good things to do, Cool things, Energy saving tips, Eco build, Carbon footprints, Co2 emissions, Climate change. Bookmark the permalink. You can follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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