By: Mark Cullen (Jun 26 2015). While interviewing a young child on his obsession with being indoors, Richard Louv leaned in towards the young lad and asked, “What is it about being indoors that you find so appealing?” “Why, that’s where the electrical outlets are,” he said. That day, back in 2004, the author decided to write a book exploring the importance of nature in the lives of young people: Last Child in the Woods. Although, it has been 10 years since Louv first published his landmark book, kids continue to suffer from “nature deficit disorder” and sequester themselves indoors. We are at risk of developing permanently hunched backs from looking down at our electronic hand held devices.
Tag: Green Schools
Teaching a Kindergarten Class in the Great Outdoors
How many children get to say that they spent the morning not only in the great outdoors, but doing their part to help wildlife as well? One perfectly sunny, but breezy day in May, my kindergarten class at P.S. 197 in Brooklyn, NY brought the native plants that we had been growing in our classroom to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, part of the National Park Service’s Gateway National Recreation Area, to provide nourishment for monarch butterflies, bees, and other pollinators.
We had grown the plants from seed that we collected at the Refuge back in October. It was the latest chapter of our year-long Growing a Wild Brooklyn and Queens program, which includes 12 other participating NWF Eco-Schools. In addition to getting the children – and their parents – outside for a second trip to the Refuge, the program gave me the impetus to get the children outside a couple of more times to plant wildflowers in our own pollinator garden at our school.
Early child development: Body of knowledge
Nature 523,286–289
As government education experts call for toddler literacy, and baby apps proliferate, are we losing sight of materials-based learning? Infant scientists and young explorers thrive in the open air and through free play, eager to grasp the world — literally.
Carbon-copy playgrounds. Cramped classrooms. 'Car park' school grounds. Across the industrialized world, these are the environments in which most young children are expected to play and learn; zoo enclosures can look more enriched. Studies are emerging that reveal poor design as a hindrance to learning in the very young, as damaging as militaristic drills. Meanwhile, frogspawn and starry skies — once the recruiting agents of science — are beyond many children's experience. Here, two leading practitioners in developing learning environments for the young set out what needs to happen.
Green Roof Valuation: A Probabilistic Economic Analysis of Environmental Benefits
Clark, Adriaens, and Talbot, 2008
Freen (vegetated) roofs have gained global acceptance as a technology that has the potential to help mitigate the multifaceted, complex environmental problems of urban centers. While policies that encourage green roofs exist at the local and regional level, installation costs remain at a premium and deter investment in this technology. The objective of this paper is to quantitatively integrate the range of stormwater, energy, and air pollution benefits of green roofs into an economic model that captures the building-specific scale. Currently, green roofs are primarily valued on increased roof longevity, reduced stormwater runoff, and decreased building energy consumption. Proper valuation of these benefits can reduce the present value of a green roof if investors look beyond the upfront capital costs. Net present value (NPV) analysis comparing a conventional roof system to an extensive green roof system demonstrates that at the end of the green roof lifetime the NPV for the green roof is between 20.3 and 25.2% less than the NPV for the conventional roof over 40 years. The additional upfront investment is recovered at the time when a conventional roof would be replaced. Increasing evidence suggests that green roofs may play a significant role in urban air quality improvement. For example, uptake of NOX is estimated to range from $1683 to $6383 per metric ton of NOX reduction. These benefits were included in this study, and results translate to an annual benefit of $895-3392 for a 2000 square meter vegetated roof. Improved air quality leads to a mean NPV for the green roof that is 24.5-40.2% less than the mean conventional roof NPV. Through innovative policies, the inclusion of air pollution mitigation and the reduction of municipal stormwater infrastructure costs in economic valuation of environmental benefits of green roofs can reduce the cost gap that currently hinders U.S. investment in green roof technology.
Comparative life cycle assessment of standard and green roofs
Saiz, Kennedy, Bass, and Pressnail, 2006
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate the benefits, primarily from reduced energy consumption, resulting from the addition of a green roof to an eight story residential building in Madrid. Building energy use is simulated and a bottom-up LCA is conducted assuming a 50 year building life. The key property of a green roof is its low solar absorptance, which causes lower surface temperature, thereby reducing the heat flux through the roof. Savings in annual energy use are just over 1%, but summer cooling load is reduced by over 6% and reductions in peak hour cooling load in the upper floors reach 25%. By replacing the common flat roof with a green roof, environmental impacts are reduced by between 1.0 and 5.3%. Similar reductions might be achieved by using a white roof with additional insulation for winter, but more substantial reductions are achieved if common use of green roofs leads to reductions in the urban heat island.
Towards regenerative development: A methodology for university campuses to become more sustainable, with a focus on the University of South Florida
McDonald, 2008
The administrations of several universities have developed strategies to reduce the negative environmental effects created by their institutions. Because no single, comprehensive methodology to guide institutions to sustainability exists, these strategies range widely in scope. As well, the definition of “sustainability” differs for these various institutions, resulting in strategies ranging from small-scale recycling programs to major initiatives to incorporate green building and revamping curricula. This study attempts to create the first comprehensive methodology to guide university campuses and processes to become regenerative. Regenerative systems “produce more resources than needed, provide resources for other projects, and enhance [the] environment” (Bernheim 2003), and are synonymous with the “triple top line” of sustainability presented by Braungart and McDonough (2002).
Sustainability in Schools: NYC Department of Education
Interview with John T. Shea at NFMT 2010. Shea talks about building a sustainability agenda, the role of operations staff in executing the agenda, and educating students on sustainability
Green Schools: The Ship is Sailing, but How to Pay for it?
Palmese, 2014
There are approximately 133,000 schools in the U.S., with 10,221 of them, serving more than 6.2 million students, in California. Seventy-one percent of classrooms in the state are more than 25 years old and in need of repair or upgrading. As the economy forces school districts to slow their new building plans, they are focusing, at least for the time being, on their existing facilities, doing what they can to implement energy and water efficiency projects, installing renewable energy sources and greening their everyday operations.
It’s no longer debatable that even modest sustainability upgrades save money, and that savings can go into a district’s general fund. The “Catch 22” at present is that finding the funding to pay for saving money can be difficult. Creative financing options are needed, and Green Technology is working on a special project to document innovative financing options for green building, energy efficiency, renewable energy, water efficiency and the myriad of other sustainable aspects of building and running schools and community colleges.
Building Curriculum
U. S. Green Building Council, Hennick
Virginia Beach City Public Schools goes to the head of the class, integrating sustainability into their buildings as well as classroom teachings.
Last January, at a wooded site 10 miles from the ocean, the Virginia Beach City Public Schools unveiled their latest high-tech teaching tool. Officials hope that it will promote collaborative and interactive learning, particularly around sustainability issues, and they’ve invested considerable resources in the device. It took two years to assemble, takes up more space than an aircraft carrier, and came with a price tag of $102 million.
It’s called a school building.
Floyd E. Kellam High School is the district’s eighth Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified building, with a ninth under construction. The buildings are a mix of basic LEED certification, Silver, Gold, and Platinum (Kellam is still being certified, and is likely to come in at either Silver or Gold), but school officials are focused on more than just getting plaques that they can hang at the buildings’ entrances. They want to infuse the district’s teaching and learning with lessons about sustainability—and that means using the buildings themselves to educate students and community members about the impact of the built environment.
Strategies for Success: Build Smart
American School and University, Cook, 2015
Schools and universities across the nation are experiencing an acute need for renovation and alteration to their facilities and grounds. Five trends are affecting education institutions’ construction calendars:
- Increasing enrollment
- Aging facilities
- Modernization
- Security upgrades
- Sustainability efforts
These five trends are the critical causes behind most planned school and university renovations today. One component that each of these trends has in common is the need to plan, procure and complete the project quickly and within the school’s scheduling needs. The Job Order Contracting (JOC) construction procurement method allows schools and universities of all sizes to purchase and expedite their repair, renovation and alteration projects, so more work can be accomplished in a timeframe that does not disrupt students or staff.
