19 October 2009

Green Roofs Save on Carbon Overheads

Excerpt from New Scientist, 3 October 2009

'...a new study has measured the amount of carbon absorbed by 13 different green roofs.

Kristin Getter of Michigan State University in East Lansing and her colleagues found that the roofs absorbed up to 375 grams of carbon per square metre over the two years of their study.

That may not sound like much, but it adds up. If every roof in a city the size of Detroit, Michigan, with around a million inhabitants, were a green roof, it would remove as much carbon from the atmosphere each year as taking 10,000 mid-sized SUVs off the road...if you grow a green roof, you need to keep it up there for a long time. It takes seven years for the roof to offset the carbon used for its building materials and become truly carbon negative.'

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