Sustainable entrepreneur

Dusty Gedge, the Living Roofs crusader, takes Kay Sexton up to his natural environment.

I only put this on when I come here, says Dusty Gedge as we walk through Canary Wharf to 1 Churchill Place. It helps me look like I belong.

He’s only fooling himself. He doesn’t blend in to the Barclays corporate crowd, and his chalk stripe suit resembles a costume more than office wear. Once a circus performer, now an impassioned advocate of the use of roofs as wildlife habitats and havens of biodiversity, Gedge does everything he does with a certain flourish, even stepping on to Barclays’ new (and Europe’s highest) living roof’. It’s an interesting paradox, given that he dislikes the way the environmental marketplace’ is so concerned with appearance.

A man obsessed by birds, Gedge wants three things and he wants them now. The first is government legislation to force all new buildings to make their flat roofs into living roofs. The second is retrofitting of old flat roofs. And the third? He wants know-nothing consultants to bugger off and stop planning roofs that can only last for five years. He says he’s sick of fights with architects who tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about and just want to roll out a sedum mat.

Nature on top

Does he worry about being seen as a crank? Why should I care what other people think, when I can sit at home and look across at this building and know it’s a living space? I’ve never had so much fun in my life. This is better than tinkering with nature reserves. Nature can happen anywhere. Lots of roofs are put up for fluffy reasons wildlife conservation and so on but living roofs also conserve massive amounts of energy and prevent flash floods. We should force every Private Finance Initiative school to build living roofs and turn them into science and nature labs for kids. It would save a fortune on travelling to nature centres.

I try to imagine some of the tough and unco-operative inner city students I’ve worked with, let loose on a flat roof bearing a relatively fragile ecosystem. The idea is frankly surreal and somewhat disturbing. But Gedge refuses to consider that others won’t be as excited as he is by his fixation. When asked whose roofs he’d most like to design, he doesn’t say Wayne Rooney or the prime minister, but the Ministry of Defence. Because they’ve got tank sheds that would be ideal habitats for stone curlews. After a few seconds thought he adds that three quarters of North America’s little terns nest on ballasted roofs on shopping malls, where most of their eggs fry before they hatch because of air conditioning vents. We could do better than that, he insists. We could have them nesting everywhere here.

A living roof, he argues, should be appropriate to the local landscape; decisions shouldn’t be made on the basis of horticulture but in relation to nature and the environment. People say they love moorlands, but a moor doesn’t look the same in May and December and nor should a living roof. We’ve got to teach people to love a changing roof like they love a changing landscape.

They’re not green roofs’ it doesn’t matter if they’re green, or brown or grey. They’re living roofs: that’s what matters. In mature markets, like Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, living roofs are often built the cheapest way, which, he insists, is best for biodiversity and he has a point. In summer, most of our landscape is not naturally lush. To maintain a green roof requires irrigation and Gedge demands that a sustainable roof be self-sustaining. Maintenance costs are bollocks make the roof right and you don’t have to factor them in. The right roof, according to Gedge, is one that is good for keeping water out, good for preventing noise, good for limiting and even soaking up pollution and good for biodiversity. Ideally it should also be designed using local resources.

Not just a pretty place

In 1997, when he took part in a bird survey in Deptford Creek, he had no idea where it would lead. But that survey found nesting black redstarts; development in the area was constrained to support their population; and, less than a decade later, as a roundabout result of his involvement, Gedge is an expert on living roofs.

With the temperature of our major cities set to rise 1-2°C in the next two decades, he claims they can help cities adapt to climate change as long as they are useful roofs, not just attractive ones. My favourite roof is on a German railway station, it’s got gravel on it, it’s not pretty, but there’s a lizard living there that wouldn’t have a home otherwise. That’s the point.

The process triggered by those black redstarts has led to 600,000 square feet of living roof space currently being planned or built in London. Gedge set up Living Roofs as a non-profit in 2004 to ensure that nature conservation wasn’t forgotten in the rush to get credit for a green’ roof.

It’s not so much a business as a crusade, although he hopes that one day he’ll be making a good living from it. As an eco-consultant, a TV presenter, an educational trainer and a public speaker, he funnels income and support from all these sources into Living Roofs. At present it’s a one-man band, funded by supporter members, predominantly green roof providers. He’s willing to accept contractors, consultants and suppliers into membership, but would exclude anybody who couldn’t prove they were working to the German Green Roof’ standard, which he believes is best practice. And he wants Living Roofs to be much more than a trade association. We need to campaign and be a promoter of the environmental benefits of living roofs.

We need to create synergies between industry and environmental groups working in climate change it’s got to be about issues as well as products.

Cut-throat competition

Perversely, the broad spread of benefits makes it harder to win public funding. If we just dealt with nature conservation we could get a grant. Or if we focused on energy issues and nothing else. But when you present funders with these overlapping issues and tell them it’s about holistic thinking to deal with a whole range of things preserving biodiversity, bringing wildlife habitats to cities, conserving water and energy, addressing climate change they don’t know how to deal with it. I’m amazed it’s easier to get funding for single issues than for things that address them all. It doesn’t make sense.

Right now he also needs to find A370,000 in corporate sponsorship to bring the World Green Roof Conference to London in 2007. He’s got the agreement of the conference organisers, although the money still has to materialise. But he’s confident. It’s not about the money; you’d miss so much if you focused on the profit, not the benefits. If I’d just been a bread-head, this place, he waves at the Barclays living roof, wouldn’t exist.

As we leave, we find a Jack-the-Ripper-style memento - a single pink pigeon’s leg resting on a huge silver pipe. Gedge is elated: it’s evidence of a recent visit from the male peregrine who uses the roof as a roost. And perhaps it just goes to prove that, even with the feelgood factor of a living roof, a bank is still a place of ruthless business.

Kay Sexton, former chief executive of Accountability, is a novelist and freelance writer.

9 October 2006