Arranging and installing the plants presents [...]]]>

This weekend we get a special treat: we’ll be taking delivery of over 250 tropical plants and installing two indoor living walls. It’s the culminating step in a complete renovation of Area Yoga Studio in Downtown Brooklyn and promises to transform the character of the space.

Arranging and installing the plants presents lots of artistic and technical challenges, but a lot of the success of the green wall has taken place quietly over the last few months, in the careful process of plant selection.

We enjoy pushing the envelope of green contracting in New York City, and we like to think outside the box in our species choices too:  the challenge is to avoid the tired old themes of corporate and institutional plantscaping without compromising ease of maintenance and good growth.

We start with a process of elimination based on temperature range, the space available, the access to sunlight and the budget.

Then we look at the things we can control, like light and water, and base our plant selection on what we can provide in a sustainable way. In this case we’re using T5 fluorescent lights, which have a great balance of energy efficiency, affordability and strong, broad-spectrum light for plant growth.  Water for the green wall is recycled from the sink of a nearby bathroom, reducing the building’s water use as well as the outflow to our overburdened sewer system.

Next we list what functions we want the plants in our living wall to perform. Where an outdoor green wall installation would consider the effect on insulation and shading, in this case we were looking mainly for air purification, and managed to include plants that reduce levels of formaldehyde, benzene, ammonia and others.

This brings us to the most gratifying step in species selection: aesthetics. A complex palette of leaves and flowers that will add a sense of depth to the space has to be balanced with need for a meditative atmosphere of concentration. It is a yoga studio after all. At the same time the plants and their built context have to be matched: a challenge in New York when most of the viable indoor plants are native to the faraway tropics.

And finally we have to source our plants. We try to get everything as locally as possible, but there’s only one place in nature where conditions match the low light and moderate temperatures found in a New York City building: the understory of a tropical forest. That’s where almost all houseplants come from, and it means that our closest source is Florida.

Transporting plants over those distances is decadent in energy terms, but it does give us an opportunity to advance state of the art green design. We may have brought the plants a long way, but we’re using them to experiment with indoor living systems for grey water purification, and creating a magical space for Brooklyn yoga students to rest their eyes in shades of green while they practice.  We think that’s work that needs to be explored, if anything to ultimately decide the process is not ecological enough.

So that’s how we arrived at the following list. They’re a beautiful bunch of plants and we can’t wait to get their hands on them.

Anthurium,  assorted colors

Bromeliad Guzmaniam, assorted colors

Gold Dust Croton

ZZ

Dracaena Dragon Series,  assorted varieties

Aspidistra

Spath

Aglaonema, assorted varietes

Spider Plant

Dens Orchid

Bird’s Nest Fern, Japanese and Kangaroo varieties

Nephthytis Allusions, assorted colors

Philodendron

Hoya

Pothos

So come take a class at Area Yoga on Montague street in Brooklyn and check out the new indoor living wall installation. It promises to be magical!

Like so many green builders he is driven by [...]]]>

Here is a great local green builder from the Bronx. His name is Steve Ritz and he is a classic example of how green building is much more than the daily activity. He may grow vegetables but like he says, he is not a farmer.

Like so many green builders he is driven by love of humanity and life. The building is actually secondary.

As a New York green contractor we totally relate to Steve Ritz drive to turn NY green and healthy. We consider him an ally and inspiration. We share a unified vision of not only lessening our impact on the world but actually going a step further and bringing life back to the world.

That is the difference between doing no harm and actually doing good, treading water and swimming.

Steve Ritz swims.

It [...]]]>

The web site CleanAirNY.org has an email list worth subscribing to. Sponsored by the NY Dept of Transportation, the alerts tell you whenever NY is at risk of smog. You’ll get an email the day before saying, “Hey tomorrow is a clean air day!” with advice on what to do: drive less etc.

It is common sense advice but what is cool is that they are keeping you updated on the air quality of NY, which changes daily.

It is nice to know when the city is especially smoggy since you may be able to plan around it, or AWAY from it….

As a NY green contractor we try to reduce our footprint by bicycling as much as possible. We have a diesel pick up that has been converted to run on vegetable oil from a local doughnut shop but whenever we can we use our bikes and foot scooters for small runs to the hardware store.

Store bought laundry detergents are full of chemicals. In fact they are packed with fertilizer! Plants love laundry water that [...]]]>

Eco Brooklyn’s clients usually get a gray water system. And our clients tend to be natural minded anyway, with a healthy dose of liking to save money. Thus comes the interest in making your own laundry detergent.

Store bought laundry detergents are full of chemicals. In fact they are packed with fertilizer! Plants love laundry water that has store bought detergent. And so do plants in the sea. All our super strong laundry detergent is helping the algal blooms that increasingly are cause for concern since they kill off all other marine life through suffocation.

Stopping the water from getting to the sea in the first place. Thus doing gray water systems is a great start to stop unwanted toxic runoff to the waterways. The second is to make sure that what does get into the water is as natural as possible. Thus the interest in natural soaps.

Above is an algal bloom that occurred off the SW tip of England.

Check out this great one minute video on how to make natural detergent. It is SO easy to make! You only need a couple easy to get ingredients. And they are cheap. Forget about the ecology, the money you save is huge!

These are the ingredients for laundry detergent:
Borax
Baking powder
Soap flakes

Other ingredients you may want to try:
Hydrogen peroxide (great for blood/wine stains)
Few drops organic essential oil (Lavender, mandarin, pine, peppermint, whatever you like)
Organic flower powder (Lavender or rose or whatever)
Scented castile soap
Eucalyptus essential oil or soap flakes (in winter/for colds)
Tea tree oil (antibacterial)

By the way, with simple modifications you can use these basic ingredients to make most of your cleaning products including shampoo, scouring powder, mopping solution, deodorant, and more!

The Twinkie is always the same. It lasts forever, is full of chemicals and is made on some distant planet. And never does it create a healthy sense of community.

The Brooklyn Farmers’ Market on the other hand is possibly the most powerful community force [...]]]>

I see the Brooklyn Farmers’ Market as the antithesis of a Twinkie.

The Twinkie is always the same. It lasts forever, is full of chemicals and is made on some distant planet. And never does it create a healthy sense of community.

The Brooklyn Farmers’ Market on the other hand is possibly the most powerful community force since Indians sat around camp fires on the banks of the East River.

The Farmers’ Market is never the same, bursting with a variety of heirloom vegetables, intelligent people and seasonal fare. It does not last forever but rather only happens during a certain window of time at a certain place, thus pulling you into the immediate world around you. It is devoid of chemicals and unites local people and food together. And it creates such a powerful sense of community.

As a Brooklyn green builder I am passionate about things that build community – not only for people but for the diverse species of plants and animals in the world. The Farmers’ Market encourages farming a diversity of small ecosystems where humans and nature interact in a more balanced way.

You can feel this at the Farmers’ Market. The people selling their food are passionate about health and holistic thinking. Everyone has found themselves in a supermarket asking a question of the supermarket employee to realize not only do they know nothing about the food they are stocking but couldn’t care less.

Not so at the Farmers’ Market. I educate myself on food and the environment but I look to these people for advice. The guy who sells cheese not only knows the scientific names of the cheese cultures but what temperatures they work best at and what foods bring them to live. The mushroom vendor knows all the medicinal attributes of their food. Never will you look at a shitaki mushroom the same after hearing about their psychological and physiological impact on your body.

Today I went to the Farmers’ Market, like I do every Sunday and like always it was an enlightening joy. I ran into neighbors, I discovered new fruits and vegetables, and it was pointed out by the bread guy how the organic flower that is sprinkled on the freshly baked bread had a “cool zen garden pattern”:

I saw exotic colors and unusual shapes. Life had come back to food. Food had come back to life.

The market was buzzing with smells, music and invigorated people. There was a bioculture. There was life. Healthy life. Despite the sweltering heat people were being part of and actively making community.

Just for fun, for a dose of contrast, I popped into the local box store across the street. Its super air conditioned halls were so cool and refreshing compared to the heat outside. And yet the halls were empty. The place was lifeless. The worker didn’t know if they sold Twinkies but he did point me to the food isle, if you can call it that, just beyond the candy isle and before the footcare  isle. It had an variety packaging, all containing dead food, all a variation of corn syrup and salt.

It is a sad fact that people actually consider this a place to buy food. The Farmers’ Market, despite its wonder, is VERY expensive. The people from the projects two blocks away do not and can not shop at the Farmers’ Market. They shop at the box store, where you get what you pay for.

You see, the Farmers’ Market charges up front. When you buy an heirloom tomato you are paying for the real cost of food. You are paying for a living wage, for healthy crop yields, for small scale economy, and for health. It is like paying in cash. You leave the market not owing anyone anything.

When you buy the tin of processed food you are not paying up front. Despite the sub par quality of the food, you don’t pay for the soil erosion, the chemical contamination, the diversity extinction, the poor wages or the many other costs associated with selling a product under cost. It is put on a credit card you that you pay later. In fact we may well be paying for many generations to come.

And yet “poor” people can’t afford anything other than buying on credit. The Farmers’ Market is out of their economic reach. They are stuck in a system they not only keep alive by consuming it’s output but are the slaves that run it. They produce the garbage in the big box stores and that garbage is all they can afford.

How do we break that cycle. How do they get access to the Farmers’ Market?

I don’t know. I am a green builder. I know about other things. I however do appreciate the Farmers’ Market and am grateful I am part of its cycle.

Zoom into the Brooklyn area and click the “Identify” [...]]]>

The NY Dept of Health released the latest figures for cancer in New York State. It is in the form of an interactive map where you can click on an area and see the amount of cancer cases since 2000 as well as the population.

Zoom into the Brooklyn area and click the “Identify” button to activate the areas. Then you can click on an area to see the numbers.

I immediately looked at the areas around the Gowanus Canal. The old locals say that area has higher rates of sickness. But to my surprise the number of cancer cases around the canal was no greater than other areas in Brooklyn.

What did surprise me was that Red Hook had high rates. For example a typical area in Brooklyn may have 25 cancer occurrences in 1000 people which is 2.5%. If you click around you will see this number is pretty constant.

But the coast of Red Hook has 26 cancer occurrences out of 208 people. That is a whopping 13%. It is strange that only 208 people are listed but that is a pretty barren area. See below for the area I’m talking about.

These numbers are still raw data. So for example a hospital in an area will show the area to be very elevated and you won’t know why.

But the Red Hook info is worth looking into further. It is coincidentally bordering on the Red Hook Park that has been in the news lately for being highly toxic. Interesting….Summer is coming, anyone up nice picnic on the Red Hook Park lawn?