By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CITY HALL — Mayor Michael Bloomberg traded his trusty leather loafers for jeans and sneakers Wednesday to paint New York's millionth square foot of rooftop space a dazzling white.
Decked out in a pumpkin orange t-shirt, high-waisted faded blue jeans and a brown belt, the mayor grabbed a roller and got to work painting the roof of a South Bronx public housing development building that was somehow identified as needing paint in order to meet the 1-million-square-foot goal.
"How do they know exactly? Cuz it's right here in my speech," the mayor joked.
The NYC CoolRoofs project is part of an effort to reduce cooling costs by painting roofs with special paint designed to bounce the sun's rays.
Because they absorb less heat, the temperature on light-colored roofs can be as much as 60 degrees cooler than on black-topped ones, the mayor said, reducing energy costs in a five-story building by about 10 percent.
So far, the city has painted the equivalent of 17 football fields of rooftop on more than 100 buildings, including The New School and the Department of Buildings Headquarters downtown.
In addition to reducing energy costs, officials believe that applying white paint to every flat roof could reduce the air temperature in the city by up to one degree.
