TANNER Vietnam has designed and built a roof-top garden at their office building in Phu Nhuan District, as an initiative to save energy-consumption, reduce CO2 emissions, urban heat effects and to contribute to a healthy urban environment.
TANNER employees are taking care of the roof-top garden
TANNER is one of Vietnam’s first “Green Offices” certified by World Wide Fund for Nature Vietnam (WWF Vietnam) in August 2010. TANNER and its employees have been continuously demonstrating a deep commitment to protect the environment and to save energy. TANNER had all employees on hand to design the garden, place the plants and grow vegetables and fruits.
“Our green roof-top garden is not just about looking good, but has economical, social and educational benefits for our employees, company and the city in the near future”, said Mr. Elmar Dutt, Managing Director of TANNER. “This roof-top garden not only reduces our building’s electricity consumption and the CO/2 foot-print, but also filters air-borne pollutants, thus benefits the urban environment.”
Ly Thu Yen Green Office Project Coordinator of TANNER states: “TANNER employees are eager to contribute to this green and ecological project. We use a rain-water tank with an automatic irrigated system to efficiently water the plants with filtered clean water. The office organic waste gets composted as fertilizers for the garden. The plant blossoms create also a lush place for employees to relax, while vegetables and fruits are used in their daily lunches.”
Growing plants on the roof-top is a popular ecological concept in many mega-cities, like New York or Tokyo, where green zones and parks are getting diminished due to urban expansion. For instance, it was calculated that the temperature in Tokyo could be lowered by 0.11–0.84 °C if 50% of all available rooftop space was planted with greenery. This would lead to a savings of approximately 100 million Yen per day in the whole city’s electricity bill.
“Because of the long-term and enthusiastic commitment of our employees, I believe this garden has a mutual beneficial objective. Apart from the inevitably environmental benefits, we place a strong value in the corporate social benefits where all employees learn to be friendlier with their environment and encourage the same time their families and friends to go green together”, Mr. Dutt stated.
TANNER also has a forward-thinking and advanced plan to install in the future a roof-top photovoltaic solar-system to generate own renewable electricity for office use. We consider the fact that Ho Chi Minh City has from 2,000 to 2,600 hours of sunshine per year, which can generate around 5,2 KWH of electricity per square meter per day. This new Green Office initiative is poised to reduce a large amount of our own electricity consumption from the local energy supplier and relief us from frequent generator-use when there is a power-cut. However, we are still waiting for more information and action from the government in reference to laws, guidelines and tax-incentives for self-generating and using self-generated ecological friendly energy, as well as a positive act on the electricity sale to the grid by feeding the over-supply back to the public grid, before we are making this investment.
With a growing trend of “Going Green” among enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City, TANNER Vietnam has developed also a Green Office Consultancy Team, to share their successful environmental management system with valuable development- and implementation tactics. “We welcome all interested companies to visit our office to collect field experience and give them relevant Green Office consulting tailored to each office”, so Ly Thu Yen, Green Office Project Coordinator of TANNER states.
For further information on TANNER Green Roof-Top Garden and the WWF “Green Office” program, please contact:
Ms. Ly Thu Yen
Green Office Programme Coordinator
TANNER Vietnam
43D/8 Ho Van Hue, Ward 9,
Phu Nhuan District, HCMC, Vietnam
Tel: +84 28 3997 3452 – Ext: 109
Fax: +84 28 3997 3465
Email: yen.ly@tanner.de
Website: www.tanner.vn
