When people say that academics make the world’s worst businessmen, Alan Darlington can understand where they’re coming from. The president of Nedlaw Living Walls is, after all, the holder of a PhD in plant sciences. While good ideas bubble up in university labs and classrooms all the time, bringing them to the marketplace he acknowledges, “requires a different skill set.”
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Yet Dr. Darlington’s canny combination of two existing green technologies into a single breakthrough innovation is not only a laboratory success story, but the heart of what is today a multi-million-dollar business. And, he says,
“I’ve been a part of the whole sequence, from working in the lab to making it work as a company.”
Oddly enough, Dr. Darlington’s invention was originally designed with extraterrestrial applications in mind.
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Funded by Canadian and European space agencies, his work at the University of Guelph’s Controlled Environments Systems research facility involved finding methods to recycle the air inside a lunar module or space station.
Dr. Darlington’s team hit upon the idea of integrating both bio-filtration technology (the use of natural microbes to break down air pollutants into benign components) and phytoremediation (the use of plants to restore a contaminated environment).
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He explains.
“I guess the eureka moment was when we saw how we could take those two general concepts ... and just tweak them, really, so it would work indoors. There was all kinds of mathematics and engineering, but it was really just ‘If we did this and this – wow.’”
At the same time, he added, “once we started working on it, we said, ‘Well, they’re not really making many lunar bases.’” He began to think instead about using the wall’s bio-filtering technology to remove volatile organic compounds from the air people breathe inside buildings right here on earth.
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Tweaking the project required another three years, said Dr. Darlington. “It took that long to take an idea that was working really well on a bench top and translate it into something that would fit the building industry,” he recalled. For this phase, the support he received from the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) was key.
President Tom Corr said.
"Part of the Ontario Network of Excellence, the OCE usually provides funding “to help industry get research done at academic institutions in Ontario to create jobs. But besides funding research, we also provide an opportunity for recent graduates, who may have a business idea that originated with the university, to fund them for a couple of years while they try and get [it] off the ground.”
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The OCE’s two-year $100,000 Martin Walmsley Fellowship helped Dr. Darlington to set up a company in 2001.
The first living wall, set up in the University of Guelph’s new Humber campus facility in 2004, was followed by one in the Robertson Building in Toronto the same year.
Currently, some 150 living walls are flourishing inside buildings across North America, and they have won Nedlaw a number of prestigious awards.
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Now that they are installing their largest-ever living wall at Drexel University’s Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building in Philadelphia, for example, Dr. Darlington said.
“The best marketing I’ve ever invested in is a good project, people are just looking at it and saying ‘Wow', So we’re getting phone calls from people in that area.”
Soaring as high as five storeys in some buildings, brilliant with the cascading greenery of foliage, ferns and flowering plants, these vertical gardens can make being indoors seem like a walk through the rainforest – and they also save companies a lot of money. The walls promote a general feeling of well-being, cut down on sick leave, and enhance productivity.
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And business owners don’t have to worry about heating or cooling outside air through their energy-hungry ventilation systems – they can simply let the living wall clean the air for them. The wall actively moves bad air over the plants’ root systems before generating and circulating clean air, removing at least 90 per cent of contaminants.
Dr. Darlington said.
“There is a potential for reduced capital and operating costs. We have the numbers to support what we’re doing, so we’re not green washing; not just putting up a wall of plants. We can actually substantiate our claims about the improvement in air quality and performance in a building.”
With 10 employees at home base, Nedlaw employs a roster of sub-contractors to look after the walls – the plants get monthly maintenance visits as part of the package – in distant cities.
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While Dr. Darlington sees current economic woes as the main challenge his company currently faces, he said.
"It has nonetheless, enjoyed substantial growth, between 30 and 50 per cent, each year. We’re doing very well in the Canadian market and it’s amazing that even with the financial downturn in the States, we’re getting a lot of attention there.”
In fact, as building firms look for new and better ways to construct the spaces where people work and live, a living wall may well be the most obvious sign of such progressive thinking. Mr. Darlington said.
“It is a real marker of dedication, to the green movement and green design.”
COMMENTARY: It's beautiful, fantastic, green, heavenly. Dr. Darlington should not worry very long about the financial health of Nedlaw Living Walls very long. His company has nothing but a fantastic upside. I know one thing, if I ever own a mansion, I'm installing some of those beautiful Living Walls.
Courtesy of an article dated November 2, 2011 appearing in The Globe and Mail
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