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R Herman Miller, a furniture manufacturer created a new 295,000 square footfactory designed to be restorative to the local environment, to the extent that theynow call it the greenhouse and have seen increases in productivity approaching25%, not to mention extremely high levels of employee loyalty ( Sustainable Planet );R Ford Motor Company is planning on building one of the largest and mostambitious car manufacturing plants, on t he site of one of their own contaminatedsites, at a cost of more than $2 billion over the next twenty years, the mainbuilding is to be covered by a living green roof that will be about 500,000 squarefeet; with this type o f natural cooling, air filtering and water management systemsoverall costs will be reduced by up to $35 million on storm water managementsystems alone. (Sustainable Planet ) Some of the innovations Ford says will be usedinclude:· The world's largest ecologically inspired living roofabout 500,000square feetthat will dramatically affect the Rouge area watershedby holding several inches of rainfall· Phytoremediationthe use of natural plants throughout the groundsto rid soil of contaminants· Swalesshallow green ditches seeded with indigenous plants thatwill improve storm -water management· Porous paving that filters water through retention beds with two tothree feet of compacted stones, helping manage storm -water runoff· Trellises f or flowering vines and other plants to shade and help coolthe Rouge Office building and the new assembly plant· Renewable energy sources such as solar cells and fuel cells· Planting of more than 1,500 trees and thousands of ot her types offoliage to attract songbirds and create habitats;R The award-winning Toronto Healthy House in downtown Toronto, Canada, builton an in-fill lot, complete with passive solar heating, high insul ation values,renewable construction materials, biological sewage treatment systems, rain watercollection, photo voltaic solar power, solar water heating and much more;24