Green Roofs
By senior environmental correspondent Devon Maloney
Reduce, reuse, recycle. What happens when that’s just not cutting it anymore? Most of us don’t even follow the ‘Three Rs’ as much as we may intend to. Humans need to cut emissions by 80% to slow down polar ice cap melting. We have to convert from gas and other fossil fuels to renewable energy.
So, what are you going to do? Plant trees? Donate a couple bucks to saving the rainforest? Get those ugly compact fluorescent lights? Does that make you think you’re saving the world? Not yet.
Believe me, it’s great when you do that one little thing for the environment every day, like turning off the lights in your room or turning down the heat a notch. It’s good, but not good enough when you walk by a dripping faucet and a hundred other little things every day.
Fortunately, [my school] is the perfect place for green innovations. Green roofs are energy saving, effective, a huge filter for air pollutants and a sponge for noise pollution and storm water runoff. The Europeans have been using them for thousands of years, and yet it is still a relatively new innovation for the general market here in the United States.
The concept is pretty straightforward: hot air rises to the roof where much of it escapes. This is both a huge waste of money and energy because the building loses the heating and cooling that makes up about 70% of its energy bill.
While many layers of insulators may help, a green roof does the same with some added benefits. The vegetation on the roof uses photosynthesis to clean the air from pollutants and acts as another layer to quiet the rooms in the building from outside noise. Any water the plants need is provided by rain, whereas the water would run off a normal roof, taking any chemicals from the roof with it into a nearby watershed. For us, this would eventually add to contamination of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay.
Conventional roofs like the school building’s current one also require periodic renovation every 15 to 20 years, depending on damage from hail or heavy storms. A green roof is not just an insulator, a filter and a natural habitat, it also protects the normal roof under it from "human activity and wind-blown debris; shielding from UV radiation and buffering temperature extremes, thereby minimizing damage from daily expansion and contraction," according to the website of a green roof company, Roofscapes Inc.
Another less quantifiable result of green roofs is the urban heat island effect. [My school] is in the center of the gradually urbanizing area of Tysons Corner and Falls Church making the vicinity more and more of a sea of black, burning asphalt. A single spot of green, as Wolfgang Ansel said, would provide nature with space to cool the weather down and eliminate pollutants.
This happens through a process of evapotranspiration, which "reduces temperatures of the roof surface and the surrounding air," according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. "On hot summer days, the surface temperature of a green roof can be cooler than the air temperature, whereas the surface of a conventional rooftop can be up to 90 degrees and warmer."
Of course, there are certain roadblocks to constructing a green roof on any building. Architecturally, not every structure can support the weight of the plants and growing medium. The greenery weighs down on the roof, and reinforcements are often very costly. While there are light weight options, the average green roof weighs about "15 to 25 pounds per square foot when saturated" says Scientific American. Considering the weight added by snow during winter months, getting the roof would be worth the cost.
On the subject of money, there is a price tag. While conservative estimates put a green roof at about $10 per square foot, others range as high as $20 per square foot. [My school] is getting more than $100 million for our upcoming extensive renovation. The scope of this renovation gives us a unique opportunity to make a difference in our school. If we rebuild, let’s rebuild it green.
With any project, there are the nay-sayers. Resistance to change is often the biggest obstacle for any initiative involving major change. Understanding the challenges that the administration faces to stay on budget and please all of their constituents is the first step. The second is to help convince them that a green innovation of this magnitude is worth the risk and that we, as the student body, would stand by this project for the likely many years it will take.
There is a lot of room for tweaking and editing and even time to go back to the drawing board. I understand this plan is far from the only option, but one thing I would love to say more than "this is my plan to make my school greener," is, "this is the student body’s plan to make our school greener."
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Reduce, reuse, recycle. What happens when that’s just not cutting it anymore? Most of us don’t even follow the ‘Three Rs’ as much as we may intend to. Humans need to cut emissions by 80% to slow down polar ice cap melting. We have to convert from gas and other fossil fuels to renewable energy.
So, what are you going to do? Plant trees? Donate a couple bucks to saving the rainforest? Get those ugly compact fluorescent lights? Does that make you think you’re saving the world? Not yet.
Believe me, it’s great when you do that one little thing for the environment every day, like turning off the lights in your room or turning down the heat a notch. It’s good, but not good enough when you walk by a dripping faucet and a hundred other little things every day.
Fortunately, [my school] is the perfect place for green innovations. Green roofs are energy saving, effective, a huge filter for air pollutants and a sponge for noise pollution and storm water runoff. The Europeans have been using them for thousands of years, and yet it is still a relatively new innovation for the general market here in the United States.
While many layers of insulators may help, a green roof does the same with some added benefits. The vegetation on the roof uses photosynthesis to clean the air from pollutants and acts as another layer to quiet the rooms in the building from outside noise. Any water the plants need is provided by rain, whereas the water would run off a normal roof, taking any chemicals from the roof with it into a nearby watershed. For us, this would eventually add to contamination of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay.
Conventional roofs like the school building’s current one also require periodic renovation every 15 to 20 years, depending on damage from hail or heavy storms. A green roof is not just an insulator, a filter and a natural habitat, it also protects the normal roof under it from "human activity and wind-blown debris; shielding from UV radiation and buffering temperature extremes, thereby minimizing damage from daily expansion and contraction," according to the website of a green roof company, Roofscapes Inc.
Another less quantifiable result of green roofs is the urban heat island effect. [My school] is in the center of the gradually urbanizing area of Tysons Corner and Falls Church making the vicinity more and more of a sea of black, burning asphalt. A single spot of green, as Wolfgang Ansel said, would provide nature with space to cool the weather down and eliminate pollutants.
This happens through a process of evapotranspiration, which "reduces temperatures of the roof surface and the surrounding air," according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. "On hot summer days, the surface temperature of a green roof can be cooler than the air temperature, whereas the surface of a conventional rooftop can be up to 90 degrees and warmer."
Of course, there are certain roadblocks to constructing a green roof on any building. Architecturally, not every structure can support the weight of the plants and growing medium. The greenery weighs down on the roof, and reinforcements are often very costly. While there are light weight options, the average green roof weighs about "15 to 25 pounds per square foot when saturated" says Scientific American. Considering the weight added by snow during winter months, getting the roof would be worth the cost.
On the subject of money, there is a price tag. While conservative estimates put a green roof at about $10 per square foot, others range as high as $20 per square foot. [My school] is getting more than $100 million for our upcoming extensive renovation. The scope of this renovation gives us a unique opportunity to make a difference in our school. If we rebuild, let’s rebuild it green.
With any project, there are the nay-sayers. Resistance to change is often the biggest obstacle for any initiative involving major change. Understanding the challenges that the administration faces to stay on budget and please all of their constituents is the first step. The second is to help convince them that a green innovation of this magnitude is worth the risk and that we, as the student body, would stand by this project for the likely many years it will take.
There is a lot of room for tweaking and editing and even time to go back to the drawing board. I understand this plan is far from the only option, but one thing I would love to say more than "this is my plan to make my school greener," is, "this is the student body’s plan to make our school greener."
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