Andrew Thornton and Azul-Valerie Thome promote supermarket rooftop growing

‘Food from the Sky’ in London at Budgens supermarket, which has 17,000 visitors a week

By Eifion Rees
The Ecologist
July 26, 2011

Excerpt:

The idea is to give other community projects all the information and advice they need, to help them realise what’s involved and how to make it work, says Budgens Crouch End’s owner, Andrew Thornton.

‘For other stores to take this on they’d have to believe it wasn’t going to be terribly onerous for them, and our work will help with that side of things.’

The major hurdle is weight load, particularly on newer, out-of-town supermarkets, says Dusty Gedge, founder of www.livingroofs.org. Commercial buildings like Budgens – solid structures from the first half of the 20th century – are ideal for purpose. But modern lightweight steel structures may not support even the simplest green roof. The carbon cost of adapting them would outweigh any benefit, says Gedge.

‘There is potential for retailers to have some kind of community growing projects on existing buildings, but only those that have the structural capacity,’ he says.

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See ‘Food from the Sky’ here.