Letters: Let’s explore mossy alternative

Dear Editor,

Many Richmond residents are extremely concerned about the climate crisis and what we can do at the city level to address it. 

As the realities of climate change disasters manifest through heat waves, wildfires, drought, and flooding in areas across our province, it would be prudent for our city to embrace more innovative solutions to mitigate them and lessen their severity. 

While the provincial and federal governments formulate policies regarding carbon footprints to lower greenhouse gas emissions, concerned citizens in Richmond are asking how we can integrate community-level approaches to absorb them.

Often, it rests on the shoulders of the local government to come up with and implement creative solutions. What a surprise! 

In 2019 Trudeau and the Liberals campaigned on planting two billion trees to help offset greenhouse gases and then reiterated that plan in 2021. So how many have been planted? So far, only 0.43% of that two billion have been planted.

I have previously written about the importance of expanding our tree canopy throughout our city, but there are areas where planting trees may not be feasible.

CityTree is an exciting and innovative green solution. They are a series of CO2 filtering structures containing a variety of moss that remove particulates and nitrogen oxides from the atmosphere while producing oxygen.

Each moss tower has the air-cleaning capability of 275 regular trees, making them a potent tool for improving air quality, especially in high-density urban areas where it wouldn’t be possible to plant such a large number of trees, such as our city core.

 Another handy benefit – especially given the scorching summer we had last year – comes from the moss' ability to store large amounts of moisture, which keeps the surrounding air cooler.

Imagine if these were installed at centres throughout our city and along high-traffic corridors as a median divider. All it takes is the political will of our city councillors to implement these kinds of innovative motions to address the climate crisis.

Jack Trovato 

RICHMOND