Rosbank and Apothecary Garden developed the first ever rainwater collection system of a city scale in Russia

22 October

In Moscow, rainwater collection system was launched. It is a unique ecological initiative of Rosbank and MSU Botanical Garden “Apothecary Garden”.

Alexey Reteyum, Director of Apothecary Garden, and Elena Kozhadey, Director of Communications and Advertising Department of Rosbank officially opened a tap of rainwater in a main greenhouse of the Garden.

Elena Kojadei

Director of Communications and Advertising Department of Rosbank

Rosbank as a part of Societe Generale Group traditionally pays a lot of attention to sustainable development issues. Rainwater collection system in Apothecary Garden is the first ecological project of a city scale for us. We are glad to be a part of this unique initiative for Russia and we hope that it will be a good practice used everywhere. We as a bank are very familiar to the concept of a smart city and the idea of smart use of natural and material resources. According to preliminary calculations, the implementation of the system in Apothecary Garden will help to economize 20% of irrigation water from the city plumbing and eventually it will cut down the costs on the utility payments.

“There are complex devices like filters of reversed osmosis that allow reducing the mineralization of tap water in 20-30 times. The plants of the Botanical Garden are watered by this very water. Now we have got the opportunity to collect rainwater from the roofs of our greenhouses. It is possible to collect up to 80 cubic metres from 2000 square metres of roofs during the season. The results of chemical analysis of rainwater are positive: the mineralization slightly exceeds the rate for the water we water plants now. The configuration of the rainwater collection system is simple: troughs connected with each other collect water from roofs which then flows into underground reservoirs. There are water pumps that pump the water into a rainwater plumbing system. We are ready to share our experience and treat his system as a some kind of experimental sample that should be distributed to the other places as we do not want to be the only ones in this sphere. If the experience is successful and I think it will be, then I hope that we will serve as an example and everyone will start to install such systems even in the backyards of houses. The rainwater collection system can be used not only for watering plants but also for technical use”, Alexey Reteyum, Director of Apothecary Garden.

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