While visiting Denver this week I had the pleasure of touring the Environmental Protection Agency’s Regional Office. The EPA is definitely an organization that “practices what they preach,” and one example of that can be seen not inside the Denver Regional Office, but up on its roof.

We all learned as kids that the color black attracts heat, while white repels it. The tops of many office buildings are black tar, which attracts heat and makes buildings difficult and expensive to cool. One inexpensive and simple solution to this is to paint them white, but an even more environmentally-friendly solution is to “go green.”

To be honest I was unfamiliar with the concept of a green roof before seeing this one in Denver. According to the wiki entry I just linked to, green roofs help by “absorbing rainwater, providing insulation, creating a habitat for wildlife, and helping to lower urban air temperatures and combat the heat island effect.” I can attest to the wildlife angle; I saw several birds up there!

If you want to know more about the Denver EPA’s roof project, you can find more information at this link, with many better quality pictures of the roof (read: not from a cell phone) appearing here.