Tag Archives: green

Green Roofs Coming to Toronto

Toronto is set to implement a law that would make green roofs mandatory for tall buildings. Being Toronto, the policy is confused and is arguably not bold enough, but the fact that this is being tabled with support across the city is a very good sign. Torontoist author Toodd Aalgaard has a look at the green roofs coming to Toronto:

After January 30, 2010, according to a draft version [PDF] of the by-law being tossed around today, every building “with a gross floor area of 5,000 square metres or greater shall include a green roof,” meaning that rooftops greater than five thousand square metres in area will require 30% green coverage, with 60% for rooftops exceeding twenty thousand square metres. Further, the construction and maintenance of new roofing will toe strict guidelines laid out in the Green Roof Construction Standard [PDF], ranging from assembly and load bearing to fire safety and plant selection. Even minimal alterations will be subject to City approval.

The Globe and Mail also examines Toronto’s green roof law:

The proposed bylaw would mandate specially irrigated rooftop gardens that are said to reduce air-conditioning costs and mitigate the “urban heat island” effect blamed on pavement and dark roofs.

Part of Mayor David Miller’s climate-change initiative, the move was deferred for fine tuning yesterday and was to return to a meeting next month of the city’s planning and growth committee.

Eco-Friendly Golf Courses

I never thought I’d be writing about golf courses on this site because golf courses are absolutely awful for the environment. They use lots of pesticides and consume insane amounts of water – all so people can hit a ball into a hole. So, it is with shock that I find out that there are at least seven eco-friendly golf courses on this planet. These are places I’d try to hit a ball!

Machrihanish Dunes, Scotland

This course in Scotland, opening this May, is historic in a number of ways. It’s being built on a Site of Scientific Interest (SSSI), the first time this has ever been allowed. The course steers clear of the rare native plants for its fairways and makes only less important grounds in play. It’s also literally inspired by golf history. The course will use no pesticides, chemicals or non-natural irrigation systems at all. Not even heavy machinery is allowed on the course. It will be a throwback to how the game started, a real natural links course built out of the sand dunes near the Mull of Kintyre. The course’s naturalist approach to the game is a lesson Donald Trump, who has been trying to build a 1 billion pound golf resort on wetlands nearby, would do well to learn.

This Spring Make Your Landscaping Green

If you have property, you likely have a space that can be used for planting (at least in North America), so why not take that space and shape it to reflect your care for the environment? Here’sa list of ten things to make landscaping greener around your home.

Two: Scale back too much lawn.
By its very nature, grass lawns are very durable and easy to maintain. But with the perfecting standards we’ve come to expect today, lawn care perfection has practically become an intramural neighborhood competition. Having a green and luscious lawn is certainly desirable, but why not scale the proportions back a bit to reduce the need for all of that extra fertilizer, pesticide, and water use?

Three: Eliminate strong chemical products.
Believe it or not, one of the best possible ways to achieve a healthy, thick lawn is to wean it off of all of the complex and harsh non-organic fertilizers and pesticides. Traditional organic substances like manure and lime can help your yard find a perfect balance-effectively creating a stronger root system and a significantly higher resistance to weeds and other common turf problems than a chemically-supported “surface only” lawn will ever develop. Plus, with an all organic lawn, there’s no need to worry about letting the little tikes play in the grass to their hearts’ content!

Four: Manage your landscape’s watershed.
Landscaping designs with lots of concrete and other unnatural “hardscapes” all to often have the unfortunate effect of directing a great deal of rainwater into the storm sewer system-along with all of the chemicals and non-organic materials it mixes with along the way. Eventually, all of these non-organic substances end up polluting the clean water sources we rely on. By allowing much of the runoff water to be naturally absorbed by the organic landscape, you’re home’s land

Green Collar in Chicago

I’m heading to Chicago in a couple weeks and I’m looking forward to finding out more about the green collar jobs in Chicago. If you’re in Chi-town and know about the green movement there please let me know in the comments!

He is part foot soldier, part guinea pig in a movement that starts in the Englewood garden and may reach all the way to the Oval Office, although he may not fully appreciate it. “I’m not going to lie to you,” Wright said one crisp morning while working a row of radishes in a greenhouse. “I needed a job. Long as I was plugged in somewhere, that was OK.”

Wright works for Growing Home Inc., which offers “social business enterprise” job training for low-income people. It and he are part of the “green-collar economy,” a movement toward an environmentally sound, robust economy with a vast array of jobs, some of which are rooted in withering small towns or decimated inner cities. And guess what metropolis experts say provides the most fertile environment for the green-collar economy? Chicago, Rust Belt capital and adopted hometown of the next president, whose New Energy for America plan calls for investing $150 billion over the next decade to create 5 million new “green jobs.”