Green Walls - So, what’s new since 600 BC?


By Zac Ribak, MD Watermatic Irrigation Ltd


The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built by the King of Babylon to deal with his homesick wife’s longing for the trees and fragrant plants of her homeland. Would she recognise some of today’s green walls? Well, they range from the edible to the incredible, so she would like that, and you find them on patios as well as in palaces. But they need to work much harder nowadays, particularly with the level of Sustainable Urban Management required in our cities.


The obvious one is to help deal with the Urban Heat Island effect which is a growing issue as the summers are certainly getting hotter, energy more expensive and the infrastructure is groaning under the strain of increased consumption peaks. Air conditioning adds a huge burden at peak times and bills land with much more of a thud on finance directors’ desks these days. A single degree of cooling carries a large carbon and energy cost , and to cool a building by an additional 5 or 6 degrees due to the heat island equates to a substantial financial loading. That is the power of green infrastructure using natural plant evapo transpiration to achieve a chunk of the cooling rather than refrigeration pumps. The green plants look a whole lot better than the electrical plant, too.


No wonder then that increasing attention is now on developing the green infrastructure which is a whole lot cheaper and brings irresistible improvements to homes, workplaces and cityscapes. Watch this space for more news on a future of integrated urban management.


Meanwhile, successful green infrastructure pulls together a whole range of green ideas and systems


|72| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE


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