Waste water and the green roof

Today, we learned about waste water and how that affects our environment. Catherine Woodbury showed 2 videos to help us have a better understanding.  The video showed how a lot of people use stencil drains to dump their things such as wrappers, and if people don’t pick up after their dogs, anything besides water that gets in the drain. This all causes damage to the environment. The waste that gets in the drains will go directly to oceans or rivers, and this causes harm to the animals in the invironment, and also to the people who get their water from these rivers. The second video showed us how green roofs can help store a lot of the storm water and help prevent chemicals like pesticides to get into the drains that will eventually go to rivers. Seeing how cool green roofs were, I was excited when we went to go see a green roof on Sidney Street. It was really cool. Our tour guide talked about the technical stuff and how it worked, and a lot of us didn’t understand what he was talking about, but we got the basics. We ended our day there, and managed to get out earlier than usual.

 

Genzyme

view of the glass roof from the first floor

Today we visited the Genzyme Corporation headquarters located in Kendal square. Despite being a major office building Genzyme is an LED platinum-certified building. One way the Genzyme building accomplishes this is by using 40% less energy than a standard building, by using 100% renewable energy sources, and by being very water-efficient. One cool way in which Genyzme uses reneable energy is by using the waste produced by a nearby powerplant to create energy. This waste would otherwise be carbon emmited into the atmosphere. The Genzyme building also recieved the platinum certification because it is very well insulated and lets in a lot of outside air and light creating a healthy work environment that does not feel indoors.