True Pioneers in green roofs? How old is this building? Maybe pioneers in Canada, but I think calling them pioneers isn't being fair to the real pioneers.

Green roofs have been commonplace in Germany for over 30 years. Some US cities have gained their information and inspiration from them.

For example, almost 15 years ago the Mayor of Chicago went to Germany and saw many of the Green practices already commonplace there. Green roofs so impressed him that upon return he initiated the conversion of Chicago City Hall to a green roof. This is an immense building an entire city block long! This roof is planted in native species plants and has been in operation over ten years.

Due to the success of this roof the Mayor mandated that EVERY City of Chicago built building would have a green roof and would also be LEEDs certified. Literally hundreds of green roofs have been built all over the City of Chicago since then, and the city has an aggressive financial subsidy for green roof retrofit conversions. Even the downtown Chicago Apple Store has a green roof.

I would be interested in hearing more about why the Toronto green roofs are considered by you to be "true pioneers."

I agree with the previous poster; good for Toronto but North America in general could learn much from Germany and other European countries. We are literally decades behind these countries in green roofs and many other things.

How widespread are green roofs in Toronto? I'm guesing not very, and if so this gushing praise for Toronto seems a little naive and unfounded.

Let's make green roofs and other green practices the expectation here, not the exception they usually are in North America.

I too would like to know what is special about this Toronto green roof and why they are refered to as "true pioneers"

If they aren't "true pioneers" don't mislead people by calling them that! Provide credible information!

Uh, is it just me or do nearly all of Treehuggers posts seem to be hawking some commercial business??

Really, green roofs are all over the place with a lot of innovation in both the US and Europe. But some company puts out some PR and the lap dogs at TreeHugger post it right up.

There is so much going on, do your writers really need to post this palp? Does it have to be some commercial product to get a mention on TreeHugger?

This is really getting a little disgusting. Treehugger is missing some of the really interesting trends and inspiring info by browsing and posting corporate PR. Ugh.

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editor note: We post about all kinds of things, but obviously some stories are easier to find than others, so they might get written about more. It's not because they are commercial.

Don't hesitate to send us tips about local, community, small-scale, etc.. initiatives.

Egads people.

I called them pioneers because the are one of the first businesses in Toronto to install an advanced green roof on their building. It recreates a prairie-like environment - that's pretty cool.

I wasn't making some kind of grandiose claim that they were the first to ever cover a building with earth. It's been done since ancient times.

I work for Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC) and assist in the construction of new buildings for MEC. I was not involved in the construction of the Toronto store but I have chatted with the Toronto project manager on many occasions. The MEC Toronto store was one of the first structures in the Greater Toronto area (Canada’s most populated area) to try a green roof. If MEC is a true pioneer can be debated back and forth but I will say MEC is a very early adopter of the approach of green building in North America. MEC has been building green buildings for 10 years. I belive MEC a good example of what can be achieved when trying to make your buildings less energy intensive and less environmentally unfriendly.
Now it could be said that green roofs are as old as the Vikings that landed in Newfoundland over a thousand years ago but what we are talking about is the modern implementation of a green roof, not simply putting sod over a log roof. The Toronto store was built around 10 years ago and although MEC has responded to many requests for information about the Toronto stores green roof, we don't have any official PR campaign, especially for something that’s almost 10 years old. What I find interesting about green roofs is they get allot of attention relative to other "green" features like efficient building envelopes, high efficiency heating/ cooling systems, construction techniques that make a building demountable / reusable and materials that have lower embodied energy. In a project MEC is presently working on a green roof was explored but eventually rejected when it was determined that a "greener" building could be achieved by spending the same capital on other aspects of the building. If MEC wanted to create the most PR a green roof would have been an easy way to do that but MEC wants to create the greenest building possible within the constraints of the project.
In the Toronto store (which is in a very dense very urban area) creating a meadow planted with local plants creates not only a nice refuge for urban animals (ducks have made nests on the roof), reduces cooling requirements in the summer, reduces and slows storm water runoff, but it also is a lot nicer to look at from the office towers that surround the building then a traditional tar and gravel ballast roof.

Keep up the debate around less environmentally degrading living,

Chris Higgins
Mountain Equipment Co-op