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Hamm, Germany
A visit to Hamm, in the Ruhr region, shows why it has
been honored in Germany as an ecological city. In this city, we
found experts on energy-efficient building, buildings that put the
experts' knowledge to use, and opportunities for consumers to find
environmentally friendly home-improvement materials.
Ecocenter
The size of Cedar Rapids, Hamm is the home of the Ecocenter for the state
of North Rhine-Westphalia, a center that specializes in ecological
building design, one aspect of transforming German energy use.
Mr. Juergen Veit guided us around his center, which includes an industrial
park for ecocentered companies within parkland that people can enjoy.
Everything is set among the overburden piles and remnants left by a coal
mine. The power house for the mine has been turned into a
performance facility for the town of Hamm. In the Ruhr area, many
old industries have been recycled into new uses, often with an
environmental theme.
Mr. Veit's center provides consulting services on efficient building
construction. The staff educates architects and ordinary citizens on
building homes and buildings with designs that use much less energy and
use environmentally friendly construction materials.
Environmentally Friendly Shopping
Our second morning visit was to a huge commercial building supply outlet.
OBI is the Menards of Germany, with 400 home-improvement supply stores
throughout Europe. The OBI in Hamm is the only ecological store in
the company system. Managers decided to put their first totally
ecological building establishment in Hamm since the city considers itself
an ecological town of the future.
Our guided tour of OBI market included looking at a variety of
environmentally friendly building materials including wallpaper, paints
and wood products that are marketed to consumers. The store employees
receive extra training to help consumers understand the value of those
products. We also visited the roof where there is a massive set of
photovoltaic panels to electrify the store and a green roof. Green
roofs are earthen-covered roofs where short-rooted plants are growing in
two feet of soil on top of a rubber roof liner. The rain that hits the
roof is absorbed by the soil and the plants. Excess water is drained off
of the roof to provide water for toilets in the building.
Freiherr vam Stein College Preparatory School
Mr. Rolf Wiemer, energy representative for the city of Hamm, met our team
at a school to discuss education of the school children as well as the
school's new energy-efficient building. German law requires only a
low amount of energy but the Freiherr vam Stein Gymnasium is an even more
efficient building that even reuses rainwater. It collects rainwater from
the building roofs for reuse in toilets.
The school also has solar collectors that are positioned as exterior
window awnings to both collect the sun for power and keep the direct rays
off of the windows. Landscaping was low-maintenance perennial prairie
flowers. Inside the building there was an energy display that
indicated how much electricity was being generated by the solar collectors
on the exterior of the building for the students to see. In
addition, bike racks replaced massive parking lots.
Energy Efficiency and Sports
Mr. Edmund Spindler, who is associated with a number of environmental
non-governmental organizations and who led the German delegation to the
Rio Conference on development and the environment in 1992, met us for
dinner along with Heike Koita, a Ph.D student at Dortmund University, who
had organized our trip in Hamm. Edmund has been working on energy
efficiency and sports. We had stayed the night before at a local
sports hall that used a combined heat and power system. In fact the
"Turner" sports federation required all their sports halls to
incorporate some aspect of renewable energy and energy efficiency in each
of the hundreds of facilities across Germany.
Heike studies special planning at the university. She is working on
how to get public input into ecological design. Hamm is an example
of such planning with a total transformation of old industrial sites into
people-friendly parts of a dynamic community. Here, business and
government cooperate on making development ecological.
Green Roofs
Green roofs are earthen covered roofs where short rooted plants are growing in two feet of soil on top of a rubber roof liner. We actually walked on one at the OBI market in Hamm. Since Hamm is considered an ecological town, there were a number of other buildings with such roofs. One can see pictures of other green roofs taken from the OBI roof.
Green roofs reduce the heat produced in cities where so may roofs and streets absorb and hold sunlight. Everyone must wonder what happens when it rains and the roof absorbs tons of extra water. After passing through the soil medium, the water percolates into a drainage system that moves the water into storage to provide water for toilets in the building.
The OBI roof is beautiful and it even provides a refuge for some endangered plants. The manager of the OBI store told us that employees like the job of weeding to keep plants with longer root systems from disrupting the system.
Those wanting to learn more about green roofs can access the following resources:
- Katrin Scholz-Barth is the
former director of sustainable design for the
HOK Planning Group, a business unit of The HOK Group
Inc. Katrin is a
national expert in green roof technology and leads efforts in ecological
planning and design. She's based in Washington, D.C. and can be reached
at (202) 544-8453 or Katrin@Scholz-Barth.com.
- Eva Wong is with the US EPA's program to reduce the heat island effect in cities. This
includes trees/vegetation + reflective building materials. She can be contacted at:
Eva Wong, Heat Island Reduction Initiative (HIRI), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 202-564-3528 (Phone) 202-565-2095 (Fax).
-- David Osterberg
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