Expert Q&As

We spoke with CEO George Irwin at Green Living Technologies, LLC, based in Rochester, New York, about the company’s new Green Living Walls and Green Living Roofs divisions.

Your company just created the largest soil-based green wall in North America—a 2,000-square-foot green wall in the Southeastern U.S., planted with a variety of sedum genus that were pre-vegetated offsite with 2'x2'x3" 100 percent recycled mods. So, tell me about your work with soil-based green walls. How did they develop?
The green wall technology that we own and manufacture was actually a development of our green roofing system. The green wall was originally developed as an extreme sloped green roof. Meaning, we wanted to find a way to put green roofs on sloped applications. We developed this product that, eventually, we've taken to a vertical height. And that's how we ended up with our green wall. We did have a brief relationship with a company outside of the country that kind of gave us the idea originally for the green roof, but we had no idea the success we were going to have when we turned it into a green wall.

Can you tell me some of the first green wall applications?
The green roof project was actually in Long Island, on Shelter Island. We'd taken the extreme sloped green roof and we were, like, "Hey, this would be pretty neat if it stood straight up." We have a 50-acre research and development facility, where we started messing around with some other plant material, and growing edible crops, and the green wall has just been a constant work in progress.

And now you've bought the largest one in North America.
The project came to us in roughly about February of 2007. Architect Robin Osler was the designer for this retail space called Anthropology based out of Philadelphia. The Anthropology building was to be designed as a green building. From Robin's design perspective, the floors are recycled wood from a barn out West, there is a front facade that is also made of that same wooden material. The premise behind the wood is for it to actually act as a façade to shade the window areas. Our green wall was incorporated for a few reasons. Number one, it’s very aesthetic, it's gorgeous. Number two, the green wall technology, in theory, has the same capabilities as a green roof.

Green roof technology has been researched long-term to clearly show the quantitative and qualitative qualities of storm water reduction and the reduction of heat island effects, and the ambient temperature is warmer. It has also been proven that green roofing can prevent heat loss and heat gain within the building itself. Now, we've taken a green wall and covered a facade. And that building faces south-southeast, so it gets an awful lot of sun. And with that sunshine and those UV rays coming down on the front of that building, it's going to heat up the building itself. What the green wall does is really absorb those UV rays and that direct sunlight, keeping that ambient temperature inside the building much cooler. The result is a savings in heating and air conditioning. Now, because our specific panels are three inches in depth, depending upon the severity of the rains, we do have the capability of retaining storm water.

Are you working on any other projects?
Absolutely. To our knowledge, the green wall, the exterior product I just described to you, is the largest soil-based green wall in North America. There probably are other, what we call "green facades," which are either cable systems or trellis systems. Ours is soil-based. Currently, we are working on and installing a project in New York City for the Equinox Fitness Center, which is a 650-square-foot indoor green wall, and it's soil-based. I'm not sure, but I think it’s going to qualify for the largest indoor soil-based application.

Oh that's great.
We're very excited. We have other projects in the works. We're working on other projects in California, in Malibu. We've done work for the Three River Wet Weather Association in Pittsburg. We're working on projects with Earth and Environmental Services in Waterford, Massachusetts. What we're really trying to incorporate our green technology into everyday applications.

Are green walls also something that people could have on a smaller scale in their home environments?
Without question. We've taken our green wall modules and we also manufacture it for retail sale. If a homeowner can hang a picture, he or she can hang a green wall. It's an excellent application for the do-it-yourselfer gardener, and we also have what we call our table-top version, which is a smaller one that just sits on a counter, and you can grow herbs in it or annuals. We've had a bunch of success with edible vegetables: string beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers.

That sounds great.
This can be year-round, indoor or outdoor. We're trying to develop not just our products, but various product applications. We're doing indoor herb gardens. You’re not limited to really anything. Since we custom-manufacture most of the projects outside of our standard retail panels, we can create a three-inch depth of growing media, as deep as six inches. It's really depending upon the plant material. So it really is a wonderful application for the do-it-yourselfer. In addition, we're also using them as science projects in schools. Instead of having kids plant their little corn, or beans, in a plastic cup that gets thrown away, we're donating our green wall panels to some local schools here in Rochester, and the kids are actually planting in the green walls, watching them mature, and then in the springtime, we’re going to mount the walls for them.

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