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Here is a crap article by the New York Times arguing that in order to stop global warming we need to pick between either sacrificing (consuming less) OR picking greener options of consumption (so we can consume the same). My response? Duh! We need to do BOTH. And even then we may not have [...] Check out this petition on change.org. We think their proposal to turn an abandoned tract of land into green space will benefit many New Yorkers. The Rockaway Beach Branch Committee is petitioning the New York City Council to turn an abandoned 3.5 mile stretch of the old Rockaway Beach Branch railroad into a green [...] We’re Brooklyn-based green builders dedicated to turning our local neighborhood green, but we’re always following the latest developments in global standards for more sustainable living. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) met in Durban over the past two months in order to hammer out a plan for extending the Kyoto Protocol. [...] As New York green contractors we follow the latest developments in NY building codes very closely. Yesterday, the New York City Council enacted three proposals from the Urban Green Task Force. The new codes, effective July 1, 2012, mandate more stringent regulation of waste, recycling, and pollutant filtration, representing a step forward for green [...] New York green contractors and homeowners are applying a modern innovation to an age-old technology. The body creates two types of waste, so the logical approach is a toilet capable of two types of flush: a gentle gurgle for liquid waste and a more generous gush for solid waste, resulting in water conservation through [...] Eco Brooklyn recently obtained a copy of McGraw Hill’s Green Building: Square Foot Costbook 2012. Construction cost data books are intended for use by planners and builders who would like to get a quick, rough idea of how much a job might cost. I think it’s pretty cool that green building is at a point where resources like [...] Eco Brooklyn’s show house is now home to a beautiful new landscape which has been certified by the National Wildlife Federation as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. Nestled among many homes in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, NY this garden provides a home for a wide variety of shrubs and perennials that have invited in a number [...] On a beautiful fall day in early October, Eco Brooklyn, a New York City green contractor, took to the South Plaza of Union Square in downtown Manhattan to check out New Green City, an event hosted by GrowNYC. The event hosted many contributors, ranging from non-profits and schools to entrepreneurs, government agencies, and corporate [...] As a New York green contractor the truth is that our work is very much about things not in NY. Each time we salvage wood from a dumpster we aren’t saving a NY tree. We are saving a Canadian of Brazilian tree. As a company we may be acting locally but our vision is [...] A typical thing happened today in the life of Eco Brooklyn. One of our workers noticed a dumpster full of wood and called it in to the office. I dispatched our “Rescue Truck”, Eco Brooklyn’s veggie oil pickup, to go salvage the wood before it was carted off to the dump. This wood has [...] Small changes on a large scale make a huge impact. This is a simple concept and if applied it will improve the countless number of buildings that make up our total global infrastructure. NYC claims around 975,000 buildings and they account for 79% of this cities green house gas emissions. When it comes to [...] We went by to check on a deck we built in Manhattan last year. It looks good! It was raining which made the deck glisten more. We made it out of salvaged Douglass fir joists from an old building. We sanded them down and oiled them up with natural oils. Check it out: [...] Hemp is actually one of societies oldest cultivated plants and has only in the past century gotten a bad name mostly due to political and financial interests wanting to dissuade its use. But recently it is becoming more popular again as a building material. Check out these videos on the topic. They show how hemp is [...] We love buildings made out of shipping containers. They are a green builder’s version of the cardboard box that every child turns into their own world. We very much look forward to building a shipping container home in brooklyn. Or maybe our first shipping container building will be our Eco Brooklyn office and salvage [...] I just read Garden Up, Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces by Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet. Humans have become very good at building up with cement and metal. We cover large parts of the planet with buildings of all sizes. We all see the value of building upwards in this way [...] Here is a very useful document outlining the New York Tree Planting Standards. It is what Eco Brooklyn references when planting trees in sidewalks. The city and Eco Brooklyn agree on one crucial thing: that the open space around the tree should be as large as possible. They want it because it lets the [...] We all know there is a lot of green washing when it comes to green building materials. Below is a great definition of green building materials by the recycling department of California. It should help you determine for yourself whether something is green or not. —————- Introduction The concept of sustainable building incorporates and [...] EPA Makes Final Decision: Newtown Creek is Added to Superfund List Release date: 09/27/2010 Contact Information: John Senn (212) 637-3667, senn.john@epa.gov (New York, N.Y.) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today added Newtown Creek in New York City to its Superfund National Priorities List of the country’s most hazardous waste sites. The final listing [...] Copenhagen has become the model for making streets bike friendly. I went there about 15 years ago as part of a construction and city planning tour to check out the city and it was amazing. At the time they had a 15 year plan to drastically reduce their cars and turn the city over [...] If you haven’t signed a petition against Fracking please do so with this link. http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/676/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4322&tag=youtube If you want the negative view on Fracking check out this three minute Video. And yes Haliburton and Cheney are once again part of it. It is so funny how they pop up wherever there are mass deaths, ecological [...] Here is an article on Eco Brooklyn in today’s NY Times Blog. http://fort-greene.thelocal.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/sustainable-brownstone-101/ The general gist is that green building can be affordable. They say Eco Brooklyn “practices guerrilla green-building techniques” to achieve this, which involves a lot of dumpster diving and salvage. We try to set up more formal ways of collecting material but it [...] Cancers from Environment ‘Grossly Underestimated’. ”Daily Exposures Cause Far More Cancers Than Once Thought”, a Presidential Panel Says. According to studies almost half of the US population will be diagnosed with Cancer over their lifetime…. It makes me think of the Roman empire where they regularly ate off lead plates and all their plumbing was [...] When most people think of wood they don’t think cancer, but studies have shown that wood workers have a higher level of respiratory cancer. This was brought to my attention when a local lumber supply sent me the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for wood . At first I thought, ” Why do you [...] Building along green standards does not significantly increase the construction time or cost. There is no reason why not to build green since it may save money in the short term and is guaranteed to save money on a monthly basis once the building is done. I wouldn’t say this is the case with [...] The Homeowner’s Guide To Mold by Michael Pugliese is a thorough examination of mold and mold remediation. I recommend it for any contractor. It won’t get you to being certified but certainly will give you the information needed to assess a mold situation and take action. The author is an expert at mold abatement [...] Here is a cool tree house slide show. It is a far cry from Brooklyn green building. A respite from our boxy row houses. I got an email recently with a funny title: Need Help Converting Husband. What fuel does he run on now?! The sender of the email, the wife, was not aware of the humor though. She was asking me for info to convince her husband, who from the sound of it seems like a lost [...] We are planting our front and back gardens at the Eco Brooklyn show house and welcome anyone who wants to be involved. The gardens are edible gardens as well as aesthetically beautiful. Drawing from horticulture, permaculture, feng shui, xeriscape, gray water and Biodynamic gardening we seek to redefine the definition of a Brooklyn brownstone [...] Did you know that in addition to carbon dioxide, humans release as much as 150 volatile substances from our bodies, including carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, phenol, and hydrogen sulphide?! I got this from the book “How To Grow Fresh Air – 50 House Plants that Purify Your Home or Office” by Dr. Wolverton. Since [...] There are a number of ‘green’ product listings and databases on the web; Greenspec at BuildingGreen.com and Pharos, for example, but most (if not all) of them require a paid annual membership. One good source of free information on green products is Oikos.com. More than 2,500 companies are listed in a searchable database. Others [...] |
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