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O\u2019Neill Cooper, a senior at Miami Palmetto Senior High School, is passionate about the environment.<\/p>\n
A member of the village\u2019s Student Advisory Committee and the Youth Council for the past three years, he is leading a project in the youth council that is meant to spread awareness about Green Roofs to the Palmetto Bay and South Florida communities through a series of social media posts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe project is a partnership between the Palmetto Bay Youth Community Involvement Task Force (YCTIF) and Green Roof Initiative,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cI actually founded it myself.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always been into environmental policy, but the organization itself is the continuation of a project in a competition from the Innovate To Mitigate Project.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that they are spreading the word through social media posts because focusing on short form social media proved in a first study for the competition the best and quickest way to promote \u201cgreeners\u201d in general.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we promote on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram on all of our accounts, which are just under the name Greener Finishes and then alongside that we also do research and public lectures at different meetings and organizations. The last public lecture we gave was at the Palmetto Bay Gardening Club, but we\u2019ve also given lectures at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cooper said that the message primarily is aimed at homeowners or businesses, mainly middle-aged and older adults, because of the subject matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it\u2019s not the most entertaining thing in the world and even with college students they don\u2019t have that much purchasing power and they don\u2019t have homes,\u201d he said. \u201cMore middle-aged adults have homes that they can install things on, or maybe they own a building or have a business in a large commercial building.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that so far they have gotten a good response.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn that study we did, almost everyone said that the social media posts were one of the first interactions, if not the first interaction, they had with greeners,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cWe did an initial survey to see what people think when they hear the words Green Roof. A lot of people thought it was painting your roof green. I thought that was good to know because we\u2019re kind of starting from zero here.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut almost universally we\u2019ve gotten responses of that they\u2019ve enjoyed the videos because of the fact that it\u2019s actually giving them a way to get into greening without having to sit down and read some lengthy paper or watch an hour-long documentary. A 60-second video works better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similar Green Roof projects in some parts of the country have prompted questions, suggesting that not all homes or business buildings are structurally sound enough to support the added weight of the plants, the moistened soil and any other materials required. Cooper doesn\u2019t think that\u2019s a problem in South Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was first getting into researching everything that was the main concern of mine, but actually especially in Florida we have really strong building codes because of all the hurricanes and there was a set of legislations in the \u201980s and \u201990s called the Ashra Accords which just really shored up our building codes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was in response in most part to Hurricane Andrew, so most buildings in Florida built within the last 30 or 40 years are almost guaranteed to be able to support it, and even then most buildings before that are also able to support it because green roofs are not as heavy as a lot of people imagine them to be, especially greener from the smaller side of things, since they have less soil medium.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cooper said that the University of Miami campus has 26 buildings with green roof design. He said that they are also doing interviews with relevant professionals in the field.<\/p>\n
The Green Roof Initiative team consists of Annika Adamo (research director), Isabella Cardozo (social media director), and Nicolas Salas (chief editor and media designer).<\/p>\n
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