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Queens Ledger Reports on, "Green Brooklyn Conference" November 16, 2006
Thursday, November 16th, 2006
"Marty Doesn't Want to Be Green With Envy, Just Green"
From Queens Ledger. By Medi Blum
"Painting our town green is something we're committed to," insisted Beep Marty Markowitz in a hailstorm of green clichés that drew laughter from the audience and a knowing smile from the borough's biggest cheerleader. "Soon we'll be saying: Brooklyn, how green it is."
He was kicking off the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment's Second Annual Green Brooklyn Conference, which he enthusiastically hosted at Borough Hall last Thursday afternoon. The theme for this year's event was "The Sustainable City," with an implicit focus on how businesses, urban planners, and developers can aid the city - and perhaps earn some greenbacks - by making themselves more earth friendly.
Just back from on a jaunt to London, where he taught the locals that Brooklyn is not just a child of Posh Spice and David Beckham, he conceded that the city across the pond is "leagues ahead" of New York in its approach to sustainable development, energy efficiency, and transportation planning, among other green things. "And for any city to beat New York," he lamented, "for me is intolerable."
"Brooklyn is experiencing unprecedented expansion," continued Markowitz, noting that an anticipated 100,000 new residents will be joining the borough within the next three years. To handle that responsibly, Markowitz argued, would mean "devising and implementing a citywide energy policy that emphasizes conservation"; building the "maximum amount of affordable housing and new schools"; improving recycling; ensuring that all local government vehicles are hybrids; encouraging the creation of local biodiesel plants; devising solar-powered air conditioning systems; and coming up with a "21st century transportation strategy."
Citing what he considers to be existing Brooklyn environmental advances to be proud of, Markowitz mentioned the solar-powered MTA terminal at Stillwell Avenue, the fully wind-powered Brooklyn Brewery, the Red Hook Farmers Market - where the food is grown on top of a former basketball court - and the anticipated LEED certifications for the proposed Atlantic Yards project and the already underway Navy Yards expansion.
At the table for the Brooklyn Children's Museum, their spokesman showed renderings of their $39 million-plus capital expansion project. The construction will double the size of the museum and feature solar panels that will feed energy back into the grid, a geothermal heating and cooling system, rooftop rainwater cisterns that will be used to water the building's surrounding gardens, and indoor lighting that will dim automatically at the increased presence of natural light. With these and other innovations, the BCM aims to attain LEED silver certification under the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, and hopes to be the first "green" children's museum in the country.
At their uncluttered stand, Tri-State Biodiesel displayed a laboratory beaker of the product they hope to provide New York with soon. The faint smell of fried food coming from the cooking-oil-turned-fuel lingered over Director of Waste Oil Collection Spiro Theofilatos as he explained that TSB has not yet secured a site for their plant, but nonetheless will begin collecting waste oil at the end of this month from food suppliers such as Whole Foods.
Many other exhibitors sat behind mounds of pamphlets and brochures - which BCUE promised used "100 percent recycled and chlorine-free paper with soy-based inks" - such as the local Region 2 office of the EPA. Their materials were geared toward school-aged participants and included "Let's Go Green Shopping" which urges young people, who contribute to about $300 billion in spending each year, to use their allowances on recycled, reduced packaging, and reusable items.
Chelsea Green Publishing, on the other hand, deliberately brought only one copy of their catalog, so as not to be wasteful with paper, marketing director Beau Friedlander explained. Enthusiastically networking with the attendees, Friedlander stood over a table stocked with Chelsea Green titles such as The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, The Passive Solar House, and Listening to the Land. While the books on show were relatively conventional as far as green politics go, Chelsea Green is also the home of more envelope-pushing volumes like The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure.
The Green Brooklyn Conference, sponsored by Con Edison, likewise tended to highlight more mainstream and media-friendly environmental initiatives. This was not the place to learn about living off the grid or making sweeping alterations to one's consumerist lifestyle.
The Council on the Environment of New York City plugged Greenmarkets, tables displayed recycled carpeting and building materials as well as energy efficient light bulbs and non-toxic paints, and Seahorse Power Company of Massachusetts pitched their solar-powered "Big Belly" trash compactors as an ideal replacement for the overflowing public trashcans that line the city's sidewalks.
The panel discussions on "Sustainable Development for the 21st Century" and "Conservation, Energy, and Sustainable Food for a Cleaner, Greener Environment" were not so much discussions as individual sales pitches for the various businesses, non-profits, and organizations represented. A common cry from many participants was that New York City is in many ways "green by default," as BCUE's Ryan Kuonen stated in her workshop on Sustainable Transportation. Because of its comprehensive and reliable public transportation system, as well as the fact that New Yorkers live in densely concentrated apartment buildings and thus in many ways conserve energy without even knowing it, New York is already a good deal greener than many suburban communities in America. Still, it's no Seattle yet.
For developers in the audience, there was quite a bit of handy information. Bob Gardella of Conservation Services Group gave a presentation on how his company brings houses up to New York State EnergyStar standards and also consults on the building of new, energy-efficient properties. Bart Bettencourt, of Bettencourt Green Building Supplies, explained how he went from being a furniture maker to selling recycled and sustainable woods and building materials full time in Williamsburg. And Paul Mankiewicz, executive director of the Gaia Institute, presented a formula for successful green rooftops, which includes taking recycled and expanded polystyrene, mixing it with compost and mulch, and planting either light succulent plants or more hardy and heavy regional shrubs, depending on how strong the building is underneath.
Considering, as Mankiewicz said, that one-tenth of New York City's space is on rooftops, and the heat-transfer that occurs through them plays a sizable role in the energy efficiency of buildings, green roofs stand to become a popular trend among developers eager to win eco-conscious tenants to their condos.
In many ways BCUE's event reflected how businesses are becoming more aware that going green not only helps clean the air, it also cleans corporate reputations and has tremendous popular appeal these days. "Green" marketing has been an arrow in the corporate advertising quiver for decades now, but in this current era of construction and retail excess, the color seems to have a stronger influence on wallets.
Jeffrey Hollander, founder and CEO of Seventh Generation, manufacturers of recycled toilet paper, biodegradable laundry detergent, and chlorine-free feminine products, demonstrated how "there isn't a boardroom in the U.S. where companies aren't discussing" sustainability, and how big business cannot afford to ignore their environmental footprint because "75 percent of the value of any business is in its brand and reputation."
The winners of the 2006 Brad Pitt Sustainable Design Competition for New Orleans, architects Matthew Berman and Andrew Kotchen of workshop/apd, echoed the message that going green not only saves money, but also attracts more business. Prior to entering the design competition started by Pitt and Global Green USA to rebuild a part of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, workshop/apd "specialized in well-appointed apartments for well-appointed people," Kotchen explained.
By all appearances, the architects did quick and thorough homework in devising their plan for "GREEN.O.LA," which features countless green design elements, and which Berman and Kotchen hope to be able to replicate in Brooklyn at some point. Now famously linked with the ubiquitous and socially conscious Pitt, workshop/apd ought to have a leg up in doing so.
For, as Markowitz noted at the beginning of the conference, "Being green is...very hip these days." And after a day in which the word green was used as a noun, an adjective, a gerund, and even a verb, without ever being completely defined in any form, it was tempting to see Brooklyn as suddenly very hip indeed.