A Japanese company has come up with a novel way to cool the office and save the environment – living ‘green curtains.’
Technology company Kyocera has fitted its Japanese offices with trellises outside the windows. Instead of using air conditioning units powered by electricity, plants have been planted to climb the trellis and cover the windows.
The plants will protect the office from direct sunlight, allowing the office to cool naturally and reduce absorb damaging greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The fast growing plants shade the offices, lowering outer wall temperatures during the summer by as much as 15 degrees Celsius compared to walls not shaded by the plants.
Nobuhiko Kitagawa, plant manager at Kyocera said: “The green curtain not only helps to save energy but also provides environmental awareness among our employees.”
The most popular of the plants used in the green curtain is the fast growing goya plant. It has dense foliage to block sunlight and produces a type of pumpkin. The pumpkins are a seasonal Japanese vegetable and employees have been harvesting them to use in meals in the company canteen.
So far the scheme, originally trialled at offices in Nagano in 2007, has been expanded to 12 factories. Green curtains now stretch across a total of 294 metres in Kyocera offices, saving 2,713kg of CO2 each year.
Greeno, UK around 2 years, 5 months ago