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Raise your hand if you’re a “green builder” who sometimes doesn’t feel very green at all. Yeah, you’re not alone.

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Every industry has its own challenges.

Mattresses have to be comfortable without being squishy. Restaurants must cater to time-honored tastes with comfort dishes, yet innovate. Dog trainers have to instill fancy tricks but also teach their dogs not to bite toddlers, which just has to be hard.

Because occasionally … let’s not lie … we all want to bite toddlers.

The green building and landscaping industry, however, has it particularly rough. While green builders try to do their part to help the environment, there are some very un-environmental practices baked right into the job. Which means, unfortunately, green builders often have to take shortcuts that work against the very benefits they’re trying to provide. Benefits such as:

• Reduction of resource use
• Cleaner air, water and soil
• Better ecosystems for native plants and animals
• Smaller landfills and healthier oceans

If that depresses you, well, it should. (Can we go back to toddler jokes?) But it doesn’t need to end the conversation, which is what it too often does these days. Instead of throwing your hands in the air and concluding that there’s just “nothing to be done here,” let’s take a deep dive into exactly what’s going wrong – and what that means about potential solutions.

Green roofs represent a significant upfront cost, but what if you could get that money back sooner? Here are a few ways to make your green roof pay.

Everyone loves the look of a green roof.

Or at least, everyone should love the look of a green roof. And anyone who doesn’t probably needs to be committed. But hey, we’re biased.

Point being, any roof that has the capacity to support green infrastructure is a good candidate for the increased stormwater management services, detoxifying and cooling abilities, and serious aesthetic appeal offered by green roofing.

Only problem: Them things are expensive.

Most people stop here, assuming that they can’t afford a green roof “right now” … or possibly ever. But that’s not taking into account the many options available for decreasing the upfront burden, as well as upping the roof’s ROI over time.

It’s time to consider both. Here’s how to make your green roof pay today.

Pollinators are and always have been incredibly important to humanity, but we don’t treat them way. It’s time to wake up and give pollinators the respect and protection they deserve.

If you’re one of the many who think of butterflies as something cute that lands on Bambi’s nose, and birds as creatures to decorate your feeder, well … you’re not alone.

And to be fair, they are those things. But they’re also critical to the overall health of our environment, as well as a crucial link in the human food chain.

Why? Because they’re pollinators.

Despite all the fuss on the news and in scientific journals over the last several decades, though, too many laypeople are still left scratching their heads and wondering, “What is a pollinator?”

Those who do have an inkling usually associate the word with bees, having no idea that the category is so much larger than that. But don’t feel bad; you’re not alone.

That said, it’s time we do something about this misunderstanding. Because while we think bees rock, they are show-stealers. If we’re to heal the environment and bridge the gap between city and nature, answering the question “What is a pollinator?” should be at the top of the list.

Taking care of your green roof does more than keep it pretty, but do you know how to do so for maximum benefit?

Maintenance is an important part of any living system. When we cultivate something, we must keep cultivating it in order for it to survive – and offer the benefits we’re looking for.

Green roof, rain garden, bioswale, even a nature-scaped yard … these are all natural habitats forced into populated areas. Even with the right mix of native plants, these systems are unlikely to survive on their own within the milieu of human habitation.

So today’s question is: How can you maintain your green roof for maximum benefits? How should you think about maintenance in the first place, what benefits are we talking about, and how can you achieve them?

It starts with a better definition of maintenance.

Have an owie? Pop a pill! We humans rely heavily on drugs that make us feel better, kill pain and put us to sleep … but now animals are paying the price. 

What do you get when you combine aquatic animals and antidepressants?

The start of a really good joke … or at least, so it seems at first. Sadly, that’s as far as it goes. Because believe it or not, Earth’s fishy folk are actually exposed to regular (and sometimes shockingly high) doses of pharmaceuticals.

It’s not just them, either. Mammals, crustaceans, snails and other animals are also affected. And in almost all cases, it’s not an improvement.

If we want to keep our world ecology healthy, it’s time we take a hard look at this issue … and do something about it.

Stormwater runoff is a problem plaguing cities, but many people don’t know what to do about it. We say understanding is the first step, so let’s start there.

When you wake up to a stormy morning and look out your window, you likely think nothing of it. Rain happens all the time, after all. It’s just what nature does. The coffee, on the other hand, will not make itself.

And that’s about when the average person stops thinking about rain … if they even get that far.

The trouble is, not thinking about it doesn’t make it go away. Cities still deal with hundreds of billions of gallons of precipitation every year from both rain events and snowmelt.

Seriously, hundreds of billions. And where does it go? Right into our streets, sewers and waterways. It’s time to not only answer the question of what is stormwater runoff, exactly, but also to lay plans to manage it more effectively.

There’s a lot of emphasis today on bringing birds into our cities, but are we really providing a safe habitat for them? The facts suggest we’re not. 

We build green roofs. We set aside small patches of wilderness in the midst of urban bustle. We carefully curate nesting sites and habitats for critters, all in hopes of enriching our cities and bringing birds back from the brink.

But think about the message we’re actually sending to our feathered friends.

“Hey guys!” our newer, greener cities broadcast. “Come on down! Nest up! Build a family. But oh, uh, bring your helmets! Cuz that building ain’t movin’.”

And that, if you’re a bird, is a major problem.

Plastic pots are a major bugbear of the landscaping and green roofing industries, but are biodegradable pots really the answer? Today we explore what works and what doesn’t, as well as what YOU can do about it.

You’ve been there. You buy a new plant, perhaps a tomato for the garden or a dracaena for the windowsill. You grab a terra cotta pot, upend your new baby, give it a new home and …

… you’re left with a plastic pot. What do you do?

Most of us dutifully wash it and stick it in the recycle bin for municipal pickup or dropoff. Problem solved, right?

Umm. Well, no.

Unfortunately, our recycling system today is pretty broken. Municipalities might take plastic pots, and nurseries might promise to recycle them, but – not to put too fine a point on it – that’s mostly B.S. What doesn’t get thrown away can clog up sorting machines at recycling plants, or it gets shipped to developing countries, adding to their mounting problems. Needless to say, outsourcing the issue does not get rid of the issue.

No, the responsibility is on us – the American landscaping and green roofing industry – to lead the advance toward a more sustainable future.

*waves torch*

If we want to act as good stewards of the environment, it’s critical we solve this here plastic problem as soon as possible. And biodegradable pots are, in theory, a good way to do that.

But are they really? If so, what do we need to do in order to shift the industry away from chronic plastic use and toward a more sustainable alternative? Let’s take a look.

Existing green roofs can give us lots of information for future sustainable design, as long as we take care to monitor them carefully.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a 12 percent increase in relative humidity!

… is something you’ve never said.

Yet perhaps you would if you had an amazing green roof monitoring station. (Ahem, like the one we just installed on a municipal building in the Village of Orland Park. Not to brag.)

The ability to monitor green roofs is an important one, and one that we here at Ecogardens have been pushing for some years now. Taking the time and spending the extra money to add in monitoring capabilities to green roofs can bring us a wealth of knowledge and significantly increase the value of green rooftop infrastructure.

Here’s why it matters and how you can monitor green roofs effectively.

Urban ecology is tough to define and tougher to agree on, but we have to do so if we want to make real strides in favor of life in our cities – including our own.

If someone asked you to offer a comprehensive urban ecology meaning, would you know what to say?

If your answer was something along the lines of “like, life in cities?” then join the crowd. Even people in the ecological and sustainability spaces have a hard time offering a true urban ecology meaning. The topic of life in the built environment is a big one, and we often forget crucial aspects of the definition.

Where we’re not forgetting things, we’re disagreeing on them. It’s a problem, especially when we try to sum up the concept in a single sentence, which often does more harm than good.

We’re not blameless here at Ecogardens, which is why we’ve been working hard lately to develop a more well-rounded urban ecology meaning and share it with our followers.

Want in? Read on.