New file format and grass roofs?!

There are millions of people out there who are trying to make us greener to save the planet. Many ingenious ideas have arisen through this “green movement” but the new .WWF file format is not one of them. The people over at the World Wildlife Fund decided that it would be a good idea to create a new file format that was pretty much the exact same thing as .pdf except it doesn’t allow you to print the document. The idea is that if you can’t print then you will be saving trees because you won’t be wasting paper but wow…what a dumb idea. The only thing this will succeed in is thoroughly pissing everyone off. I can’t really remember the last time I printed of something from a pdf document that I didn’t absolutely have to (probably because I NEVER have!..word documents on the other hand…). Another bad thing about the .WWF format is that right now, it is only available on Macs…..well I guess that’s a good thing since I only use windows.

Well on to an actually interesting green idea…The Lincoln Center in New York City has a roof covered in grass! OMGWTF?! Yes you heard correctly it truly is a grass roof. The project is called the “Hypar Pavilion” and covers an area of about 7,200 square feet. It is a perfect idea because it allows for business people to build what they want where they want while still keeping the environmentalists happy. As a bonus feature, since this is a relatively new thing, it will attract many tourists to the building, helping the restaurant below! It will not only keep the environmentalists happy because it brings some CO₂ munching greenery into the city but for many other reasons too. One of the things it will do is it will decrease the amount of storm-water runoff during storms which is always a good thing. Another way it helps is if you are replacing a black roof (which most roofs are) they decrease the albedo (measure of how strongly it reflects light from light sources such as the Sun) of the building top, which in turn reduces the heat island effect (and has a teeny-tiny effect on global warming but it's so small I really shouldn't mention it. In addition, since this is a restaurant, the rood could be used to grow fresh fruits and vegetables.