In May, Toronto became the first city in North America to enact a green roof mandate: “…any new development with floorspace of more than 2,000 square meters devote between 20 and 60 percent of its roof to vegetation.” A centuries-old technology, green roofs provide a wide range of benefits!

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You may have heard about Majora Carter, the host of THE GREEN, Executive Director of Sustainable South Bronx and upcoming host for a brand new series called ECO-HEROES.

Majora has been a major proponent of greening rooftops in the city. In fact, her own rooftop garden is featured in an episode of BIG IDEAS FOR A SMALL PLANET. Check out a clip from the episode below.

Majora’s organization, Sustainable South Bronx (SSB) has scored a huge victory in the New York State Legislature. With the help of of the organization S.W.I.M., assembly man Rubin Diaz, Jr., and many others, there is a new law that creates a tax rebate incentive for building green roofs on top of buildings. Building owners can look forward to exempting 25% of their rooftop garden construction costs against their annual property taxes. It looks like this time, law and order has been used to promote the greater good.

You can get more details on this development in the Sustainable South Bronx Website [www.ssbx.org].

Green Rooftops are a great subject for everyone to consider. For many people who invest in property, making a garden on your roof is a great way to start bringing nature back into the urban setting. If the laws of nature are literally being enacted on your very roof, doesn’t that make life in the city feel more natural? Perhaps people will learn to do things sustainably by the example provided by successful tenements that promote the growth of plants on rooftops.

Lets not forgot about the often overlooked benefit of roof gardens: all the delicious and EXTREMELY local food you can make for your building. If you are a landlord, you should still buy a roof garden because you can sell food to the entire building. Imagine if you did not have to go to the grocery store for a snack, instead you could go up to the roof and buy a fresh salad from your landlord. If you own your own house, then you have no excuse, you could feed your family with a roof garden.

Here are a few places to get more info on green roofs

Green Institute [greenspace.greeninstitute.org] – This site has a quick cheat sheet on the numerous financial and health benefits of having a a roof garden.

G-Sky [www.greenrooftops.com] – This site contains a list of green roof products that are quite innovative and inventive. For instance, there are hanging panels you can get that create hanging vine plant installations against your house’s walls.

Greenroofs.com [www.greenroofs.com] – One of the best and oldest green roof sites on the internet. Make sure to take a long tour of this website.

So, you’re in to this water-efficiency thing, eh? Really want to cut back, do you? We though you’d never ask…

1) Ease up on the meat. To produce 1 kilogram of boneless beef, it takes 6.5 kilograms of grain, 36 kilograms of roughage (coarse grains and pasture), and 155 liters of drinking water [www.treehugger.com]. Eating less meat (or not eating it at all) can be the most meaningful environmental lifestyle choice you make — a vegetarian diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat eating diet requires 4,000 gallons per day. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year.
2) Get serious about greywater recovery. Whether it’s a sink [www.treehugger.com], or this sink [www.treehugger.com], a whole bathroom system [www.treehugger.com] or a butt [www.treehugger.com], or this butt [www.treehugger.com], there’s a lot of ways you can “re-use” water. TreeHugger has written about the Toilet Lid Sink [www.treehugger.com] which very sensibly lets you rinse your hands with the water that is filling the tank. Saves space too! The Aqus [www.treehugger.com] system does much the same thing but in an under-the-sink way. The Ban Beater [www.treehugger.com] lets you easily suck up bathwater and deliver it through a hose to your garden. As our “Weird” Eco Habits contest [www.treehugger.com] has elucidated, a woman in Hiroshima not only saves water, but gets her exercise while moving bathwater by bucket from the tub to the laundry. “Three rinse cycles of clean water just seems such a waste.”
3) Start with good green design. Building a house from scratch? Plumb it for greywater recovery with separate pipes from the toilets and the rest of the house. Design the roof for decent rainwater collection or incorporate green roofs, which mitigate and filter roof runoff. Put in big cisterns [www.treehugger.com] to hold water through the entire summer. Use permeable paving [www.treehugger.com] to let water soak through to the ground instead of washing away. If you or your architect is feeling like pushing the envelope, consider using a “living machine” to filter grey (or even black) water with natural plants and other organisms. And remember, if you live in the desert (California, we’re looking in your direction!), think twice before planting grass.

4) Get involved. Really. In the year 2000, the United Nations established that 2.64 billion people had inadequate access to sanitation. This value represented 44 percent of the global population, but in Africa and Asia approximately half of the population had no access whatsoever to sanitation. Every 10 seconds a child dies because of dirty water. 4 million children under five die terrible deaths each year due to water-born diseases. 1.1 billion children have no clean water close to their homes, but they could [www.treehugger.com]. Many children share the water they use to drink, cook and bathe with their livestock, but it could still be clean [www.treehugger.com]. Matt Damon set up H2OAfrica [www.h2oafrica.org] after he “saw firsthand the effects of one of the largest public health issues of our time, the world water crisis which is at its worst in Africa.” And the United Church of Canada [www.treehugger.com] has started a campaign to control the spread of bottled water.
5) Location [www.treehugger.com], location [www.treehugger.com], location [www.treehugger.com]. Many of us live in places where we cannot survive sustainably. You can’t live in Arizona without air conditioning and water resources that millions are trying to share. Perhaps we should be making our choices about where we live by considering the ability of the land to actually support us without artificial means. Florida’s reservoirs below and above ground are badly depleted and becoming briny with saltwater seepage. The water shortage is so bad in parts of the state, despite a recent tropical storm, that people have been hauled into court and fined for violating strict water rationing standards. Some major American cities in the Southwest, including El Paso, San Antonio and Albuquerque, could go dry in 10 to 20 years.

Don’t be bummed, though. Conserve a little now, and we’ll have clean water for a lifetime [www.treehugger.com], and beyond.

Spring has sprung, and with it the opportunity to start planting gardens, flowerboxes and the like in anticipation of a warm, fruitful summer. As with just about everything, TreeHugger has some favorite methods and helpful tips to make your gardening experience a little greener.

Waterwise Garden is a great place to start to get more information on green gardening; it has tips on xeriscaping and other low-water gardening methods, includes plants that can survive on little or no water for weeks at a time, and has tips for organic pest control and DIY recipes for getting it done. As an added bonus, it’s available as software in addition to the print version, which is a great way to save a few trees. Learn more about what to find in the book in our review [www.treehugger.com]. Because plants don’t like synthetic fertilizers any more than we do, we recommend TerraCycle Plant Food [www.treehugger.com]; the same goes for keeping your plants and gardens bug-free, so we like organic insecticide [www.treehugger.com] to keep you, your plants and the planet happy.

If you’ve got the green thumb, but no green plants, we have you covered there, as well. Organizations like Free Trees & Plants [www.treehugger.com] will help you grow your garden for just the cost of shipping. Even better, check out locally evolved, grown & distributed [www.treehugger.com] (LEG’D) plants; they’ll tolerate your soil types and weather, won’t bring in any new and nasty exotic insects and diseases and have a smaller carbon footprint, since they don’t have to travel far. For anyone interested in growing a green roof, Motherplants [www.treehugger.com] is the place for you: the nursery is devoted to growing plants specifically for green roofs.

For those with a burgeoning green thumb, but not a lot of green real estate, don’t fret! Check out Leopoldo’s hanging basket [www.treehugger.com] (pictured), the Hortuba garden table [www.treehugger.com] or these groovy recycled planters [www.treehugger.com] for a great place to start a container garden or to grow flowers or some fresh herbs for summertime cooking. Whether you’re an old pro at getting your garden to grow, or just starting out with a small plot and some seed packets, there are lots of fun, easy ways to make your springtime gardening a little bit greener.