What is Growing at the O'Hare Airport?

Next time you fly into Chicago O’Hare be sure to look out the window. And when you do, instead of seeing a span of gray and white rooftops you will see an amazing array of greens, browns, and oranges covering over 230,000 square feet of rooftops (with an additional 126,000 square feet in the works).

The O’Hare and Midway Airport encourages the installation of vegetated roofs in an effort to reduce the urban heat island effect, conserve energy, and reduce stormwater runoff and noise.  Today, 12 green roofs can be seen from the air with sizes ranging from small roofs of 917 square feet to the largest roof to date of 174,442 square feet located on the ORD FedEx Main Sort Building. 

The FedEx green roof is approximately the same size as 3 football fields, is the second largest contiguous vegetated roof at any airport in the world (behind Frankfort Germany) and is and the largest vegetated roof on a free standing building in the greater Chicago area. In addition, the FedEx Main Sort Building is LEED gold-certified.

To learn more about O’Hare’s green roofs and other sustainability projects, download their 2011 Sustainability Report.
 

To learn more about the FedEx green roof, check out a news story from earlier this year from Chicago News 7.