New York Gets Green For The Holidays

It’s cool to be “Green” right now. NBC devoted a week of programming gimmicks to being “Green,” with recycling and environmental efforts taking over some part of all of their hit shows. Meanwhile, Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize and Overture studios shipped out sapling trees with their fall preview kits. Just two signs we’ve seen in the last few weeks that being environmentally conscious is suddenly the right place to be.

New York City is following in the trend this year with their oversized Christmas tree. The Rockefeller Center perennial will use LED lighting (light emitting diodes) to light up the tree, resulting in a savings equivalent to the average family’s monthly electricity bill. For those counting, that’s over 30,000 LEDs on a 5-mile string of wire according to CNet.

The Green effort doesn’t stop with just the LED lighting, however. Next year, Rockefeller Center, which already has the largest collection of solar-electric panels in New York City, will have a green roof and ice chillers installed. The green roof uses desert plantings that act as a form of insulation while reducing waste-water runoff. The ice chillers provide a more efficient means of cooling the building. Meanwhile, this year’s efforts go all the way back to the harvesting of the tree, which was cut down with a handsaw instead of a chainsaw, eliminating air pollution byproduct.

I might come across a bit sardonic about the sudden interest in being Green, but that’s only because it has appeared all of a sudden from major powers, while others have been focusing on being environmentally safer for years now. I’m thrilled to see that New York is taking a more caring approach to their usual display of extravagance. I just hope that the same effort is made a year from now, when the Green movement of the last month has faded from memory.


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