Green roofs in Los Angeles

Tomorrow, I'll be co-hosting the Green Roof Market Symposium with Green Roofs for Healthy Cities and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The Green Roof phenomenon answers the question "What if we could take all that space on top of our buildings and put it to work for our environment?"

Green roofs are an important component of green building, a movement that can do more to clean up our environment than any other single change in our habits (40% of the material in landfills is from construction waste). Green roofs reduce energy consumption, mitigate urban heat island effect, filter air pollutants, and clean storm water. They also provide natural habitat for birds and green space for recreational enjoyment. Green roofs have now been recognized under the United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) accreditation program. Now we've got to figure out how to make green roofs work for our environment and for our water conservation needs.

All the information about the conference can be found here. I'll address the conference, as will Councilmember Ed Reyes, Environmental Affairs Department General Manager Dee Allen, and Commissioner Mary Nichols of the Department of Water and Power. If you're a designer, planner, developer or landscape architect, or even just thinking creatively about the design of your own home, I'd love to talk to you there. If you can't make it by but you'd like to learn more about green roofs, my legislative deputy and environmental maven Molly Rysman has more information.