Simply speaking, a green roof is a living roof. While green roof design has its roots in ancient civilizations (think hanging gardens of Babylon), as American cities have become more concerned about managing quantities of stormwater runoff, air quality, and building heat transfer, large modern green roofs have been appearing on commercial properties across the country. Now, FLOWER ot the PEOPLE, Inc. has green roof solutions specifically designed for Southern California private residences. Here the Beverly Hills green roof at Greystone Manor Estate is still growing strong more than two years after its installation. Succulent-covered roofs, like the one at Greystone and the green roofs pictured here, even provide a fire-retarding alternative to traditional shake or stone roofs.

A living roof provides superior energy efficiency for any building (saving on energy costs), extends the life of the roof membrane, is beautiful to look at, provides the local environment with beneficial air-cleaning, cooling and storm water reduction, and promotes greater biodiversity.

Green Roof Section View

1 roof flashing

2 EPDM waterproof membrane

3 root barrier

4 drainage mat

5 "L" sheet metal edge

6 1/2" pea gravel

7 nonwoven separation fabric

8 planting media

9 plants

10 gutter (optional)

It's delightful to discover a thriving treasure-- whether it is a garden or a business!  Flower to the People is such a treasure right in my own community!  Visit their website for a delightful array of garden designs that bring nature and sustainable gardening solutions to the urban landscape.  Their "Exterior Design Portfolio" in particular is expansive and a bloomin' delight!

Flower to the People is located in West Los Angeles, CA at:

11409 Charnock Rd., Los Angeles, CA 90066

FLOWER to the PEOPLE is a sustainable exterior design and outdoor lifestyle firm. Their residential and commercial clients rely on them to create unique environmentally-friendly exterior spaces that suit their contemporary lifestyles.

Composting can be simple, or high tech.  But compost is what nature does naturally under canopies of trees, under bushes, under groundcover...in the thin layer between air and soil. 

Doug Green highly recommends composting strategies that make great common sense...and he takes it a step further with "compost tea".

Compost is the heart and soul of the garden and the more research that’s done on soil structure and health, the more that compost and composting becomes important for both home and commercial gardening. If you do nothing else this summer, get the compost bin working. And if you have compost working and want to take it one step further for your lawn and garden health, learn to make compost tea. Making tea properly allows you to take the small amount of compost you make and multiply it like loaves and fishes so your entire property gets the benefit. (DougGreensGarden.com)

Compost Tea

By using compost tea to replace chemical-based fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides, you can garden safer and be more protective of the environment. Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection gives an easy pictorial guide to making compost tea:

Supplies needed: 2 - 5 gallon buckets 1 gallon mature compost 1 aquarium pump 1 gang valve (to divide the air supply into several streams) 4 gallons of water 3 feet + of aquarium hose unsulfured molasses

And Wikipedia provides more options for selecting different kinds of compost tea and how Europe handles this earth friendly solution for ground nutrition.

Wikipedia:  There are several kinds of compost tea, depending on the method and ingredients with which the tea is made. In Europe compost teas are largely distinguished on the basis of whether or not they have manure content, the latter preferred for having more consistent disease suppressive capabilities.

Sustainability Network 

More and more, no matter where you go, there are people taking steps towards sustainability. The links provided by the Sustainability Network will connect you to some really inspiring places and projects that have developed around the desire to live sustainably with the earth. 

Sustainability Network
http://www.sustainabilityproject.net/Sustainability_Network.html

Resources inclue Global Organizations, and various countries as diverse as the USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Southe Africa, Ireland, and Australia.

 

House 97: The Buck House, original home of the Center.

Campus Center for Appropriate Technology in California is a live-in demonstration home and educational center for appropriate technology and resource conservation.

This home based center is located on the Humboldt State University Campus in Arcata, California. Motivated by an approach of "education by example," CCAT offers tours, workshops, and opportunities for hands-on involvement to university students and the general public.

CCAT began in 1978 when a group of students, with the support of faculty and community members, renovated a dilapidated house on the university campus and initiated an experiment that continues today. CCAT works with fifteen HSU classes a year to incorporate new appropriate technologies into this living laboratory in sustainability.

The Campus Center for Appropriate Technology uses less than five percent of the energy consumed by the average U.S. house, produces almost no waste, and serves as a national model for appropriate technology.

Just as important as what the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology does, is how it is done. Three students live in the house and direct the program for one-year periods. Eighteen student employees keep operations going. Being directed, staffed, and funded by students makes CCAT a place where young adults become leaders; it nurtures creativity and hones professional and technical skills. CCAT helps to infuse their local university community with a practical idealism and a desire to serve the global community.

In 2007, the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology began rebuilding in a new location, offering another generation of students the opportunity to develop skills that lead to a greener future at the hands-on environmental learning center and demonstration home for sustainability projects.

A variety of university course students spend classroom time at CCAT, where students learn about everything from renewable energy to organic agriculture to green construction and design. Little by little, workers are reshaping the yard into a miniature eco-topia. “We joke that this is our little patch of South America or Southeast Asia,” Hart says, standing in the terraced gardens behind the home. The area used to be a bramble patch of invasive plants and weeds. As well as common fruits and vegetables, the garden includes edible native plants, herbs and wildflowers.

The recently installed solar panels should provide all of the home’s electricity, and a solar hot water heating system will not only provide hot tap water but also warm the house in winter by circulating the sun-warmed H2O through radiant concrete floors on the ground level. The concrete floors themselves are a thing of beauty, covered in a swirl of natural pigments made from iron sulfate and coffee topped with a soy-based sealant. The energy efficient home’s walls are filled with blown-in cellulose—made from shredded recycled newspaper—rather than industrial fiberglass.

Future projects include the installation of a rainwater collector to gather and store runoff from the roof, which will be used to quench the gardens.

For more information about the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology. Or stop by any Friday, volunteer day, to participate in the ongoing reconstruction effort.

The Campus Center for Appropriate Technology at Humboldt State University (CAL) has worked on sustainable strategies since 1978.  One "alternative technology" is alternative building techniques, which actually is a wide variety of technologies and materials that help people create buildings with less impact on the environment than traditional wood, concrete and brick.

Many regions of the world (including many parts of the U.S.) do not have enough wood to build wood-frame houses, so forest resources in other regions are depleted in order to import these scarce materials.

While wood-frame houses predominate in the U.S., many other building materials are in use around the world. Houses can be made out of locally available building materials such as cob, adobe, bamboo, straw bales, rammed earth, formed cement, and mixtures of these materials with waste debris (i.e. tires, cans, or bottles).

Inexpensive shelters can be made with poles and canvas, hides, or wool (i.e. Yurt or Teepee). In many places where wood is available, there is an under-utilized supply of "waste" -- small diameter timber (harvested in forest thinning operations). This timber can be used to make pole or log cabin style houses. Thatch, bamboo, tin roofing, sprayed cement, and living roofs can be used as alternatives to plywood/asphalt roofing.

Here are links to the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology's many resources for alternative building options:

• Alternative Building
  • Adobe
  • Bamboo
    • Bamboo Construction at CCAT By John Halley 
      
    • www.DeBoerArchitects.com
  • Cob
    • How to Build With Cob 
      
    • Cob: Technology of the Past, NOW By Patrick McAuley 
      
    • History of Cob By Jeffrey Steuben (Spring 2005)
  • Strawbale
    • CCAT's Strawbale Shed By Lisa Murgatroyd 
      
    • HSU Student Website Strawbale Shed By Tony Frink
      
    • How to Build Straw Bale Buildings [PDF 56.2KB] 
      
  • Rammed Earth
  • Sprayed Concrete and Papercrete
  • Earthships
    • Recycling Tires...More than Just Swings By Desideria Ramirez 
      
  • Yurts
    • Yurt: A Traditional Dwelling as an Alternative Building Design 
      
    
    

Appropriate Technology (AT) describes a way of providing for human needs with the least impact on the Earth's finite resources.

When determining if a technology is appropriate for a specific use,  members of the Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT) examine a number of issues:

Is the technology built locally or use local materials?

Can it be built, or at least maintained, with a minimum of specialized training?

Is its use sustainable over many generations?

Does it cause suffering in its manufacturing or use, human or otherwise, disproportionate to its benefits?

Can we financially afford it?

With answers to these questions, or at least predictions, we try to balance the benefits and harms of a technology to determine if it is appropriate.

Appropriate technology is not a specific item--it's not solar panels, or a greywater marsh, or anything. It's a way of evaluating a technology, a way of thinking about the social, economic, and environmental impacts of introducing a technology into our lives, and a technology may be appropriate in some situations and not in others. As E.F. Schumacher said when he coined the phrase, "AT is technology with a human face."

If you would like a more thorough description of the history of CCAT and four other demonstration cites at universities accross the United States see the following link [PDF 465.6 KB]. It was written by graduate student Kathy Jack under the advisement of Dan Ihara of HSU and the Center for Economic and Environmental Development.

Center for Appropriate Technology
Humboldt State University
Arcata, CA 95521
http://www.humboldt.edu/~ccat/drupal-5/?q=node/5