December 2009 students on green roofs
GREEN ROOFS ON THE CURVE newsletter
 

A Drop in the Bucket
By Christine Thuring, Student Editor (Download as a PDF)
 

Over Thanksgiving this year, I found myself in a discussion about the choices we make on behalf of the environment and planet.  It started before dinner over a beautiful glass of wine, when an uncle asked why I choose not to eat meat.  Keen on learning more about his organic garden and wishing to keep the conversation pleasant and simple, I opted for the simplest answer: “I just don’t like it.”  It seemed like he’d accepted this answer, but before I could launch into my curiosities he queried, “So you’re not one of those people who abstain from meat on behalf of the environment?”  Ach.

His take was that many of the environmental choices we make are personal sacrifices that will never be sufficient to effect the intended change.  “If you really want to effect change,” he said, “you need to target the big players: governments and policy, corporations and multi-nationals.  Until they change their ways, your choices are just a drop in the bucket that will never amount to anything.”

In genuine contemplation, I raised the point: if it weren’t for individual drops to fill it, what’s the bucket for in the first place?  As Lao Tzu put it in 6th century China, a vessel is a vessel because it is empty.  The empty space which defines its form also defines its usefulness.

Since I would travel to the World Green Roof Infrastructure Congress (Cities Alive!) in Toronto after Thanksgiving, the discussion got me thinking about the challenges associated with being a passionate “green professional.”  On the one hand, being part of the green professional community is exciting and inspiring: inter-disciplinary engagement with innovation, involvement in a growing community and market, and witnessing policy changes and adoptions of green practices can fuel great optimism for a bright future.  Yet in spite of all the positive aspects, “green” contributions are also rightly subjected to criticism and doubt, from both internal and external sources.

Green professionals whose career decisions are driven by personal determination may be challenged by demons who question the purpose or effectiveness of our choices.  On good days, all is well because we’re doing what we believe in. On bad days the demons remind us of the insurmountable scale of the challenge, allowing disenchantment to seep  in. We’ve chosen our work and engagements, which is empowering and liberating, but we may still doubt the efficacy of our contributions.

Do you ever find it difficult to keep your morale up, given that the system in which we continue to function is dinosaurian by design?  I’ve long wondered how best to protect the happy feelings associated with small accomplishments, especially in face of soul-sucking counterweights like the Tar Sands or runaway climate change.  Are personal contributions like boycotting industrial meat, composting organic waste or helping to advance green roof technology valuable, really, or are we deluding
ourselves?

Holding to the analogy, then, I was one droplet in a small watershed of professionals from all corners of the earth which united in Toronto to celebrate green roof potential and progress (at Canada’s biggest-ever green roof party).  Hurrah!  But hey, what about the negative impacts from such an international meeting?  Booh!  To reconcile this conflict for myself, I put the “drop in the bucket” analogy to test, with the hopes of finding a place where optimism is a protected gem and criticism is constructive and never defeating.

Seeking out opportunities for minimizing my personal environmental impacts related to the gathering, I found that making mindful choices was an empowering way to ease my sense of conflict.  Simply by paying attention to food and beverage and taking only what I needed, for example, I was able to create a personally holistic sense of place within the gathering as a whole.

Consumption of food and drink is a simple way to express choice for content and quality, as well as packaging and waste. Emissions aside, on international flights most (if not all) passengers will use at least one set of plastic cutlery and at least one cup.  For my travel to and from Toronto, I opted out of this system by using as little from the carrier as possible.  Before boarding the plane, I filled my travel mug (with my favourite tea) and replenished my water bottle.  On the plane, I took only what I wanted and left untouched as much plastic stuff as possible.

The important thing here is that these efforts were personal choices: they made me feel happy even if the landfill could care less.  I’ve come to recognize that likening one’s contributions to large-scale change is painful.  The few plastic cups that I didn’t use were trash from the moment they were created, simply by their design of disposability.  By contrast, I love my travel mug.  If anything, our self-centered choices represent (part of) the change we hope for; by acting upon them we are demonstrating our commitments both to ourselves and to others. And however miniscule the impacts from these choices, our experiences with them can help us better understand the barriers and limits for large-scale change.

As Thanksgiving dinner began to emerge from the warm oven, my uncle and I found a satisfying consensus.  Further to the need for “big-player” reformation (i.e. corporate and political), we agreed on the importance of every individual person doing their best.  In this case, this would include making mindful choices which challenge and reward, living within our means, and being compassionate for those with less.

I’m still experimenting with this, but now whenever I feel the unhappy uselessness of being a tiny drop in a giant bucket, whether in my work, beliefs or perceptions, I go through a quick series of corrections.  First I allow the feeling of smallness to soothe me.  I imagine my tiny form floating on a calm, gigantic blue ocean.  It’s very relaxing to feel unimportant.  Then, if it appears that the root of my conflict is derived from external sources (e.g. anxiety about climate change), I try not to let the gravity of the situation shut me down, but allow it rather to engage me in an immediate task (e.g. writing a letter).

Fundamentally, we gain the most when we do things without seeking approval or reward, not expecting anything from anyone else, and when we hold true to our values and challenge our limits.  When faced with disenchantment and personal conflict, we can find respite, rather than anxiety, from our smallness.  In a similar light, isn’t it also soothing to recall that we don’t actually know everything?  With my out-breath, I know that I cannot know what the future holds, and that the past is finished and done. With the in-breath, I know that all I know is now, and that now is good.

I’d love your feedback!  Please email me any thoughts, ideas, comments, or questions that this column might inspire, or consider posting them on the Forums page!

Kind regards,

Christine Thuring, StudentEditor@greenroofs.com
MSc Horticulture (2005), Penn State Centre for Green Roof Research

Publisher's Note:  If you wish to get on Christine's mailing list, send her an email: StudentEditor@greenroofs.com.  Read more from the Student Editor under Christine's Ramblings.

April 2008 students on green roofs
GREEN ROOFS ON THE CURVE
 

By Christine Thuring, Student Editor (Download as a PDF)

Hello green roof enthusiasts!

If you’re coming to Baltimore, for the 6th annual Greening Rooftops for Sustainable Communities Conference, Awards and Trade Show, please stop by the Greenroofs.com booth (#108) to say hello! In the meantime, I’d like to share with you a little bit about what I’ve been up to and what this conference holds.

I’ve been very busy the last few months organizing North American’s first green roof tours to Europe: Green Roof Safari! This 6 day tour runs from Frankfurt to Zürich and features a diversity of green roof projects and conversations with local policy-makers, designers and researchers. Offered from Sept. 8 – 13 and Sept. 21 – 28th, the tours sandwich the World Green Roof Congress (Sept. 17 – 18) in London UK. Visit www.greenroofsafari.com.

Left: Municipal, residential, commercial, industrial, institutional green roofs; Right:  Vetsch Earth Houses; Hundertwasser, living roofs: Big and small, we will visit them all!

At the GRHC trade show, you can find postcards and brochures about Green Roof Safari at the Greenroofs.com booth (#108). My colleague and co-founder of the tours, Jörg Breuning, can tell you more, too, at the Green Roof Service booth (#318).

Since coming to Vancouver in 2006, I’ve been intrigued by the extensive moss communities that dominate this bioregion. The mossy roofscape seems to me to embody everything that extensive green roofs are meant to be. Resilient, regenerative, and self sustaining, these spontaneous communities do not require human inputs, remaining green and functional year round.

If we relieve ourselves of aesthetic conditioning (i.e. “unwanted plants are weeds”), might these moss roofs have lessons for us? Do they express a genius loci – spirit of the place – in a way that we’ve never considered? From a plant ecological perspective, what can we take from the patterns of colonization, the conditions for establishment, and the processes of natural succession? From an economic point of view, what place do mosses truly hold within the chronology of roof degradation? Do these diminutive organisms (which lack roots and vascular tissue) really cause roofing products to deteriorate? Or are mosses just indicators that the roof is degrading, as they take advantage of pre-existing puddles and cracks?

The old tar & gravel roofs of Granville Island are extensively covered with moss, as seen from the Granville St. Bridge (Fig. 3). With a couple roofs in mind, I tracked down the property manager and was granted access for a vegetation survey. With the help of a maintenance personnel (and a scissor lift) and bryologist colleagues (people who know their mosses), two inventories of 3 roofs were conducted in 2007 and 2008.

Left: If Granville Island’s green roofscape were intentional, this part of Vancouver could rival European cities for surface area covered by green roofs. Right: Licorice fern (Polypodium glycerrhiza) is a native fern which occurs in protected corners of mossy communities, whether the crotch of a tree or the protected corner of a roof.

The diversity on some of the roofs we surveyed was variable, depending on location, microclimate or other factors we are attempting to determine. For example, the roof of Waterfront Theatre supports 3 species (2 mosses and one grass), while the roof of the Parking Garage supports over 30 species, including both native and non-native grasses, ferns, herbs and Sedums.

As Granville Island begins a major renovation project for its infrastructure and many of the buildings, green roofs will likely be included in the plans. When initially approached, the property manager wondered if it would be possible to transplant these well-established moss communities onto “intentional” green roofs. Hurrah! This could represent the next phase for this study.

If you have any thoughts, ideas or opinion, please email me.

Hope to see you in Baltimore!

Truly,

Christine
 

September 2007 students on green roofs
GREEN ROOFS ON THE CURVE
 

By Christine Thuring, Student Editor (Download as a PDF)
 

Like the Spring 2007 Students on Green Roofs Ramble, this one again contemplates how the green roof industry can stay ahead of the curve. Having a sense that this theme will persist, I’ve made this concept an entity of its own, “GREEN ROOFS ON THE CURVE.” I’d love to know your thoughts, ideas and comments on any of the content discussed; email me!

Have you heard the term “Peak Oil” lately? A ground-breaking model, the Hubbert Peak Theory, gained wide acceptance in its time, then died down in the societal cycling of ideas. This ramble will revisit the theory and attempt to draw connections between Peak Oil and green roofs, as a way of presenting challenges for the green roof community to stay ahead of the curve. By weaving lessons from the past into our current endeavours, through dialogue and practice, we can each contribute towards the realization of a healthy vision of the future.

The Hubbert Peak Theory refers to a singular event in history: the peak of the entire planet's oil production. After Peak Oil, the rate of oil production on Earth will enter a terminal decline. Without getting into the details of the model, I’ll defer to George W. Bush’s January 2006 State of the Union address, in which he admitted to “a serious problem: America is addicted to oil.”

What does this mean for the green roof industry? Just as Peak Oil will be a major test for our society, it also represents a challenge for the green roof industry. As individuals and “dirty” industries begin to ask themselves how they can reduce their dependence on oil, the green roof industry, too, should examine its relationship to fossil fuels.

First of all, green roofs must become better known for the many solutions they offer. A major barrier to green roof implementation and acceptance is that they are poorly understood. I recently saw “Escape from Suburbia,” which featured many great people and projects engaged with their understanding of Peak Oil. The importance of food security received considerable air time, but not a single mention was made of rooftop gardens. Were green roofs absent from the discussion on urban agriculture because the film-makers weren’t aware of them, or did they simply not make the cut?

In addition to better representation in the media, the benefits of rooftop greening need to be more fully explored. For example, is it valid to think about green roofs as significant carbon sinks? Will the roofs we’re designing and building today support our cities in bumpy times of oil shortage? Do they truly support the triple-bottom line of local economies in their function? Do their embodied energies vindicate their value? And beyond their environmental benefits, will green roofs help to lead the way towards urban resilience? If so, how will this collaborative role be established and managed?

On the topic of urban agriculture, some developments require a certain percentage of built space to be offset with garden plots. In Vancouver, the new Olympic Village for the 2010 Games will allot 30% of the surface area to garden plots. The Vancouver Green Strategy, due in the near future, is also anticipated to devote a certain percentage to urban agriculture.

As far as economic value goes, we know that rooftops can generate revenue by growing herbs for restaurants, but what about growing cash crops, like cut flowers? If oil really becomes scarce and expensive, then at least the infrastructure would be in place for food production. In the meantime, locally grown flowers would be nice! Certainly the design would be dramatically different from that of an extensive Sedum roof, but many of the benefits could still be maintained and measures taken to deal with anticipated issues, like fertilizer and water use.

Ecologically, if we decide to re-instate ecosystem services and functions to our urban areas, wet roofs could not only close the loop on building water use, but also create valuable habitat and improve the urban climate through greater cooling benefits. Keep your eyes open for the next issue of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities’ “Green Roof Infrastructure Monitor” for an article about wet roofscapes. Whatever the system or design on top, connecting a building to its immediate environment through biofiltration can dramatically reduce its ecological footprint.

Peak oil is well underway, and prices will likely continue to rise. The extraction that continues today has a very low ‘energy return on energy investment,’ and represents the greed of annihilist petrol giants suffering from social and environmental myopia. The green roof community can take the higher path. By integrating sustainability principles into the practical needs of this emerging industry, we can reduce urban dependency on oil. With intent and collaborative genius, green roofs can contribute to a prosperous and secure future for all.

Please email me with any ideas, comments, concerns or questions that this column inspires, or post them on the Forums page!

Christine

Spring 2007 students on green roofs
GREEN ROOFS ON THE CURVE