World Nature Conservation Day

The 28th of July is World Conservation Day, "with the objective of increasing awareness about and protecting the natural resources that the Earth is bestowed with. It is necessary to understand what ‘Sustainability’ truly means and also it is important to inculcate environment-friendly habits to lead a Green Lifestyle.  Some simple practices that can make your lifestyle green if followed in daily life are –

•     Help in conservation activities in your area / surrounding natural areas.
•     Participate in the environment awareness activities.
•     Wise use of resources like paper, fuel etc.
•     Efficient use of water & energy at home.
•     Try to avoid use of plastic bags while shopping.
•     Be a responsible tourist by practicing eco-tourism.
•     Avoid littering around during travel.
•     Appreciate nature and keep vigilance on surrounding nature destruction, inform concerned authorities."

For this purpose I want to direct you to the workshop we have set up at the University Twente called Your Sustainability Journey. This workshop includes examples of actions you might already be doing, or could do, to have a sustainable life. The website has direct links to local shops, locations, and organizations you can use to have a more sustainable lifestyle. It also shows detailed calculations of each action and how much of a carbon impact it has. You can request a workshop on the website for yourself or your team or company, and even use it as further discussion on what sustainable goals you have for your department and how you can work together to reach these. 

We take what we learned during this workshop into our project work and try to implement sustainable practices where we can.

Visit to Groendak part 2: sloped roofs

Back to reporting on our visit to groendak, we also received a lot of information about the options for sloped roofs.

For sloped roofs, groendak offers a standard option up to an angle of 25-30 degrees. The main issue is to prevent materials from sliding off the roof, and there are different techniques for this. Currently there are experiments with Velcro (Belgium) and glue (Netherlands) as alternative materials to prevent slippage. The standard sloped green roof has the same materials as a flat green roof, with these exceptions.

• Soil and substrate - Lava rocks with extra ground layer to prevent sliding
• Filtration layer - special filter with tubes integrated in the fleece (made in Belgium)
• Drainage layer - Rubber plastic EDPM (made in the Netherlands)

 

For higher degree slopes up to 65 degrees, different material is used.

•     Vegetation/substrate mat - Sedum, this can grow up to a slope of 65 degrees. The plant mat is attached to the plastic grid below by thin sticks.
•     Filtration layer - Filtration fleece, water can pass but particles are caught (Belgium)
•     Drainage layer - plastic crate HDPE with metal hooks to prevent sliding, placed every 1.5m
•     Protective layer - Fleece (Belgium)
•     Roof

There is also a groendakpan - a green roof tile. This replaces the standard roof tiles and has a small space for plants to grow in and water to be retained. The normal elements of the roof are beneath the groendakpan, no additional materials are required. The water is drained into the next tile below and then in the roof gutter. Fleece is used inside the tile to pull the water up in the pan. The height of the pan is low compared to a sloped green roof. 

To prevent drought on a sloped roof, an irrigation system with tubes and holes to feed the top of sloped green roofs is developed.

As for performance measurements, flat roof performance has been tested when it comes to temperatures, water retention, and soil moisture content, as compared to a normal roof. For sloped roofs, the performance of the groendakpan has been tested in three locations. None of the green roof types have been subjected to a Life Cycle Assessment. This leaves room for many improvements in the production process.

Book chapter

Soon to be published online, you can already read the abstract of a new book chapter titled 'The impacts of urban green infrastructure on water and energy resources: Lessons from and the need for integrated studies'. I wrote this with my colleague Joanne Vinke-de Kruijf, and it will feature in Urban Green Spaces - New Perspectives for Urban Resilience, with as editors C. M. Monteiro, C. Santos, C. Matos, A. B. Sá. from IntechOpen.

Abstract

Green infrastructure (GI) can bring both water and energy benefits to urban environments. Yet, installation and maintenance may incur additional water and energy demand. Despite the wide range of GI reviews, insight is lacking of to what extent and how existing empirical and modelling studies quantify GI impacts on urban water and energy resources in an integrated manner. We systematically reviewed 21 studies that quantify GI’s impacts on both water and energy and 86 studies that focus on green infrastructure. We investigate the parameters and quantification methods that are used for the most promising type of urban GI (green roofs) in-depth, and identify research gaps and develop a research agenda. Our review shows that relatively few studies quantify impacts on both water and energy resources. Moreover, existing studies tend to focus on positive impacts, such as heat abatement, energy savings, and runoff reduction, with little attention for negative impacts, such as energy demands or emissions. Considering water and energy impacts, green roofs are the most promising urban GI. They are easy to install and maintain in dense urban areas, reduce energy demand, and require little water. We find that all GI’s impacts highly depend on local climate and GI’s design, especially structural and storage parameters, vegetation, and soil depth. Green roof performance mainly depends on vegetation, soil moisture, substrate characteristics and depth; and different combinations of these factors can lead to important tradeoffs for water and energy resources. The results call for extending and improving life cycle assessments, especially by quantifying negative impacts such as the energy costs of irrigation, and optimizing the identified tradeoffs between the potential beneficial impacts of GI and their negative water and energy impacts.

 

Funding awarded by Climate Center UT for walk shops

The UT's new Climate Center awarded 9 projects with a total of 190.000 euro to work on issues with a geo-socio-techno perspective. For our green infrastructure project, we received 12,500 euro to organize a series of walk shops in the fall. During these walk shops participants will experience examples of green infrastructure and then in groups work on developing a feasible solutions themselves. We look forward to inviting participants from our previous workshop in April, as well as different faculties' students, and participants of the upcoming NEEDS conference at the UT for these design walk shops, to take place at the UT and Enschede city.

Green Panels added to test location

Today the Green Panels were added to the fake roof. The green panels are long trenches with 6 cm depth and sedum vegetation, and are compared to a fake roof without green panels. 

The slope is about 45 degrees, and the angle towards the sun is mostly SE 141 degrees. The tested materials as substrate are rock wool, recycled fabric, a combination of rock wool and recycled fabric, and regular soil as a reference. This leads to 5 different test locations: the first four are tested in the trays on the left hand side, and the last being the control area on the right hand side.

Making a roof on a roof

Today was the start of construction for our first Green Panel performance test. During this phase the fake roof (sloped) was made on top of the existing roof (flat) of our engineering technology faculty of University Twente, on the Horst building.

The fake roof is angled towards the SE where we expect to get the most sunlight, and sloped at and angle of 45 degrees. Additional wood was needed to ensure sufficient support for the sloped angle of the setup, which we obtained from the building's waste center to recycle. This week the roof tiles are added along with solar panel guiding rails. Next week it's time to fit the Green Panels on top and place sensors.

World Environment Day

Today is World Environment Day. This year the goal is 'Beat Plastic Pollution'. How can we apply this in our research project? We follow these steps, based on this publication on 'Solving confusion around new conceptions of circularity by synthesising and re-organising the 3R's concept into a 10R hierarchy'.

The 10R hierarchy: R0 = Refuse R1 = Reduce R2 = Resell, Reuse R3 = Repair R4 = Refurbish R5 = Remanufacture R6 = Re-purpose R7 = Recycle materials R8 = Recover energy R9 = Re-mine

0. Refuse. Avoid using plastics. What you don't use, won't pollute.

1. Reduce. We assess whether we really need to purchase/use plastics in every material involved, and ask producers to not use additional plastic packaging before sending products if possible.

2. Resell, reuse. Starting from applying reused or second hand products, the materials used during the project, once they reach their end of life, might be resold.   

3. Repair. Nothing is broken yet but the intention is to not by new if a product fails during its lifetime, but to repair it where possible. This extends the life of used plastics.

4. Refurbish. After the project finishes, if someone else can use the materials, sensors, or green infrastructure for another purpose, this should be made possible. 

5. Re-manufacture. Similar to above.

6. Re-purpose. Similar to above.

7. Recycle materials. When plastic cannot be safely reused or repurposed, it is recycled in the correct waste stream. University Twente has separate trash cans for smaller plastics for this purpose, all over campus.

8. Recover energy. This is part of the municipality Enschede's waste management scheme.

9. Re-mine. This concerns landfills and is also beyond the scope of this project, but part of waste treatment. 

 

Bonus: Help solve the problems already caused. During the well-being weeks, you can sign up for a lunch walk (free lunch!) and help to pick garbage during the walk. See the link below to sign up.

TUE - Lunchwalk "Care for the environment"

Date: 27 June 2023 
Time: Start between 12:00 and 12:30  
Location: Start HEAD 

During these Well-Being Weeks, every lunch walk has its own theme! The last lunch walk has the theme “Care for the environment”. Since the theme of these well-being weeks is “Together we care” we would like to encourage you to talk about your opinion regarding different topics. In the previous Lunch walks, you were able to reflect on your own well-being and that of others. This time, it is possible to do something about the well-being of the environment. At the start of the lunch walk, you will receive a garbage bag and garbage picker to collect garbage during your walk and clean the environment. At the end of the walk, there will be a lunch waiting for you!