THE UNION >> BLACK, GREEN & GOLD

Your Student Union is Going Green

Green Facts about the Student Union:

• The Student Union is the #1 recycler of Cardboard on Campus.
• The Student Union has installed LED lights which will save $10,000 dollars of electricity per year.
• The Student Union developed and implemented multi use recycling bins.
• The Student Union raised the temperature between two to four degrees to decrease the amount of energy used in the building.

Filtered Water Bottle Refill Stations

This water bottle refill station is one of the many that will be installed in the fall of 2009 semester in the Student Union. These stations were installed as a way to limit the amount of plastic bottles that are being used each year at the Student Union.

We invite you to try out this new feature at the Student Union and please feel free to give us any feedback that you may have. Also keep an eye out for some of our other projects that we will be working on throughout the fall.

The Green Roof Project

The University of Central Florida's Student Union is the test site for a new roof with plant media and drainage systems that allow a layer of vegetation to grow on it. The project is being led by UCF's Stormwater Management Academy. The Department of Environmental Protection agency has teamed up with UCF to study the energy impacts of the green roof.

The 3,300-square-foot roof is being used for a side-by-side comparison. One half of the roof is a conventional commercial building flat roof, while the other half of the roof is a "green roof." It's not painted green, but instead landscaped with 75 percent Florida native plants.

This building strategy can improve the facility's energy performance, air quality and the urban ecology without taking up any additional land. Green roof systems have been shown to reduce heat transfer through the roof, decrease stormwater pollutants and cut down on stormwater volume by naturally evaporating the runoff through the plant respiration process.

FSEC researchers have extensively studied building heat gain through roofs and ceilings, but planted roofs are new territory for the Center. In fact, there are only a handful of studies that have been done on green roofs in general. Simulations of the technique have found that the energy savings can range from one to 25 percent, depending on the building and the plants and soil used on the roof.