A roofing answer to climate change

Cr Pantalone said the City of Toronto was now encouraging the built-environment industry, especially building owners, to design and implement green roofs. The City of Toronto was now planning green roof retrofits on many of the city-owned buildings - especially because such retrofits could often be done within existing maintenance budgets, he said.

Other North American municipal governments, especially in Chicago and New York, are finding similar financial and environmental benefits from green roofs.

Rooftop gardens in Australian cities would generate significant air cleaning and water cleaning effects. Green roofs likewise enable slower runoff of rainfall at peak times, enabling drainage infrastructure to cope without massive and costly upgrades.

Key to all these benefits is, of course, the greenery itself. It must be drought-hardy, low-maintenance and attractive to the eye. Drought-hardy greenery means less costly rooftop maintenance, and Australia's hardy native vegetation is ideally suited for roof-top gardens.

Green roof technology is well advanced, and signifies important community, corporate and individual responses to the scary prospect of climate change. In Australia, we have a unique advantage. Our extraordinarily diverse and weather-hardy plant gene pool is ideally placed to help defeat runaway climate change effects.

Moreover, we have significant export opportunities in native plants with a capacity to range from plants sourced from Tasmania and Victoria's relatively cooler climates, to the dry arid zones of South Australia and Western Australia, to the tropics of Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Native flowering plants can support horticultural and roofscaping businesses in addition to providing a riot of delightful, restful colours across CBDs and sun-dried suburbia. Big payoffs also include reduced fossil fuel energy use, and more efficient water use - two points that should resonate across municipal, state and federal government levels.

But we shouldn't delay. Already the northern hemisphere advance guard is seeking out Australian native plants for their rooftops.

And already, Queensland is ahead of the rest of Australia. Queensland’s future green roof businesses can expect to produce healthy fresh food from recycled organic wastes. An urban organic waste management pilot project led by Central Queensland University (CQU) starts this month.

The pilot project will develop most strongly in the Brisbane-Ipswich urban corridor, and include up to two year’s research at Rockhampton. The aim is to recycle organic wastes into healthy fresh food within half a kilometre of where such wastes are generated.

The initiative is believed to be the first project of its kind. It is part of the expanding green roof movement now coming to Australia from Europe and North America.

Aside from the business benefits, community benefits of projects like these include reduction of methane pollution from landfill as organic wastes are diverted into recycling into fresh food.