Benches installed in London to clean the air and replace 275 trees

In March of this year, very unusual benches were installed on the streets of London. Their main part is a high wall of moss, which is designed to help London cope with high levels of air pollution. We offer to see how this wonderful bench is arranged.

According to the developers, the German company Green City Solutions, one such bench with a wall can replace 275 trees. Such a high efficiency of air purification is provided by the presence of moss. A wall of 1.5 square meters is filled with living moss, which breathes, grows and at the same time absorbs particles of pollutants from the air. Nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide contained in the London air, the plant turns into oxygen. The high efficiency of the moss wall is due to the fact that this plant has a branched structure, and therefore a large surface area that is in contact with polluted air.

Another important advantage of moss over ordinary trees is its extreme unpretentiousness. One plant is able to absorb and process 90 kg of dust particles during the year. In addition, the wall is equipped with an air filter that drives air through itself and cools it to a temperature of +17 degrees. This effect is observed within a radius of 5 meters from the wall of moss. Of course, this is not much, but the installation still contributes to air cooling and helps to combat the thermal pollution of the urban environment.

The moss wall is offline. Rainwater is collected in special tanks, and in dry weather it is used to irrigate plants. The panel is equipped with solar panels and special sensors that monitor the condition of the moss. In addition, the company, producing walls of moss, has provided an original way to pay for the project for the city authorities. At a price of $ 25,000, a moss cleaning panel is a costly investment, albeit with tangible environmental benefits. But thanks to the built-in display, the moss wall can serve as an advertising panel, which should attract potential investors.

According to the organizers of the project, such benches are able to solve the problem of air pollution in large cities. Transport, industrial enterprises and thermal power plants are an invariable component of any city, but trees and park zones in them are clearly not enough to solve this problem. Similar benches with panels of moss already exist in other megacities of the planet. They can be found in Oslo, Paris, Hong Kong, New Delhi and Brussels.