Ok, this entry doesn't revolve around water per se, but I couldn't resist writing on this when I saw the headline. And when you see what it's about, I hope you'll excuse my minor diversion. A Toronto city committee has proposed a new bylaw that would have T.O. as the first city in North America REQUIRING green roofs on all new construction of buildings over a certain size. First of all, let me get my feelings on this out in the open - I love the idea! Green roofs are altogether much too rare in North America. If I think about it, I can't remember having seen any in Vancouver except for a brand new one...
When the new Vancouver convention center finally opened its doors in the last couple of weeks with the largest living roof in Canada, and the largest non-industrial one in North America (at 6 acres!), it hopefully helps to set a precedent for new construction throughout North American architectural design. Now, with Toronto hoping to take a giant leap forward and cement a foothold on "Canada's Greenest City" - it's time for all major metropolitan centers to step up the plate.
The fact is, new and sustainable building practices have been around for a long enough time that more of them should be standard. There are far too many important, sustainability-oriented city bylaws and constructions codes that are voluntary. Take low-flush toilets. The technology behind these toilets has evolved enough that the "low flush" toilet is ready to drop the nickname of "two flush" toilet. You can now get the same flushing performance and the water saving features of the old thirsty models which begs the question - why aren't they mandatory? Toilets account for 30-50% of the domestic water used in the average household. Think about that. If every household in North America suddenly switched to a low-flow toilet, we could potentially lower our domestic water use by up to 25% (1/2 of 50%)! That would mean for some pretty significant infrastructure savings for water treatment and distribution.
I applaud Toronto city council for looking at bold ways to move forward into what we all know is the right direction. Sustainable building practices have been moving along at a snail's pace, and I hope these game-changing steps will be undertaken more often, and on as large a scale as possible. While I recognize there will be some hiccups along the way, we'll adjust and move forward. But the current pace of change in this space is just too slow. Though the global economic slowdown has taken over as the lead news maker, climate change hasn't stopped. Though infrastructure spending is picking up because of the slowdown, habits such as water consumption haven't changed. And here's the problem: throwing "quick money" at infrastructure projects will only prolong the issue. The goal is to spend the money as quickly as possible and therefore create jobs NOW, encourage spending NOW. The problem is, if we spend money NOW we do it with YESTERDAY'S thinking. We need to push the thinking of tomorrow into today, to really satisfy a long-term benefit from the dollars we plan to spend, and not just spend money to fix our problems in the next couple of quarters.
If you're interested in learning more about Toronto's green roof proposal, see: http://www.househunting.ca/eco/story.html?id=ed4f8022-1f8d-4ec5-a9b1-c6ed97441a62.
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