Brooklyn itself is being recycled. Buildings, businesses, materials, ideas.

That is the very premise of the founding of GBK: to encourage the sustainable and responsible use and re-use of, well, everything.

Very seldom can we point to one person or entity that embodies all of those things. Enter Hall Street Storage, a storage facility that has been Brooklyn owned and operated since 1931.

In the spirit of the green business movement and the re-development of downtown Brooklyn, the business took upon itself the wholesale greening of the warehouse complex that was built to serve the Brooklyn Navy Yard area back in 1918.

Now completed, the greening of the business and the property has resulted in an impressive transformation of both the physical complex and also the philosophies of management — both of which are now as green as can be.

The green aspects of the business are numerous; from using 100% green-e certified renewable energy to recycling the old wood beams into wood shavings that replace plastic bubble wrap (they also have biodegradable bioplastic packing peanuts made from corn starch, if you prefer). Flooring and furniture were also made from the building’s 100-year-old reclaimed wood. [Ed. Note. Correction: the reclaimed wood is being sold to local artisans to be made into flooring and furniture. Brooklyn Farm Table perhaps?!]

Read on for much more about this remarkable effort in recycling and greening not only a Brooklyn building or business, but a whole community…….

Bagasse. It is one of nature’s ultimate re-usable materials.

The pulp that remains after you process sugar cane into sugar or ethanol, bagasse can be burned to create heat or electricity, and it is often used to power the very ethanol refinery that produced it. But it can also be recycled into paper-like substance that can then be turned into a wide variety of compostable items, like lunch trays.

An initiative by NYC Council Member Bill de Blasio sought to replace styrofoam lunch trays — 850,000 of them per day, 4 million per week — that the NYC Department of Education had been buying. Looks like the new, greener trays are a winner all around, except for, perhaps, the styrofoam industry. But for them, I have just one word to say: ‘Bioplastics‘.

The sustainable bagasse trays break down or compost in 45 days. Styrofoam? 10,000 years.

Said de Blasio:

“I want to applaud the parents of my district for what they’ve done to make PS 154 an environmental leader,” said Councilmember de Blasio, a public school parent and member of the City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee.

Organizers of Parents Against Styrofoam in Schools (PASS):

“The parents, educators and students of PS 154 are very proud and excited to be the first NYC public grammar school to ban the use of styrofoam trays,” said Gina De la Chesnaye, a public school parent and organizer of Parents Against Styrofoam in Schools (P.A.S.S.). “With the help of local businesses and private donors we are choosing to serve our children their breakfast and lunch on biodegradable “sugar cane” trays. It is the first of many steps we are undertaking to ensure a greener, more ecologically sound Brooklyn and NYC.”

“I am very excited about the progress we have made in taking styrofoam out of our school,” said Laura Tichler, a public school parent and organizer of Parents Against Styrofoam in Schools (P.A.S.S.). “This is an effort that started with just Gina de la Chesnaye and I, which has now taken off and parents from all around the City are trying to find out how they too can replace styrofoam in their lunch rooms.

Also, check out a post and video from NYT City Room last June, and another from today.

Update:

Meant to include this link. People who are not entirely convinced need to check out the health and environmental impacts of styrofoam.

If anyone can bring good ol’ fashioned country back to big city Brooklyn, it’s the cast of characters who are opening the first store and restaurant — to GBK’s knowledge — that caters to those who ask themselves the phrase: “where does my food come from?”

Urban Rustic opens its doors on Friday, December 14th.

The products sold will not only be local or sustainably-grown, but the customer will get to learn the story of each item from “farm to market”.

By bringing food producers in to speak and providing tear sheets on product information and photo essays about the goods and wares, Urban Rustic hopes to fill in the storylines behind our meals. A guiding principal behind Urban Rustic is that the knowledge of the sources of our sustenance is key to eating healthy and well.

The diverse backgrounds of the owners of Urban Rustic brought them to a shared love of food, but it was their individual glimpses into the industrialization of the American food system that led them to believe that an alternative was possible. Urban Rustic is a fulfillment of a dream for all of them to bring real food with real stories to Brooklyn.

Keepin’ it Brooklyn:

[Urban Rustic's] mission is to showcase the bounty of the Brooklyn by prioritizing bio-dynamic, organic and sustainably-produced food and to join growers, suppliers and consumers through its knowledgeable staff, in-store lectures and workshops.

…

A special section of the store will be devoted to featuring a Brooklyn-produced product each week. Examples: Six Point beers and ales, Skinnyskinny soaps, McClure’s pickles, M.J.’s herbal salves.

They have also gone out of their way to run a green establishment:

Urban Rustic has a commitment to purchase power from wind sources to bypass the dependence on fossil fuels.

Take-out and delivery paper products are made from sugarcane stock.

Take-out and delivery cutlery is potato-starch based and biodegradable.

Urban Rustic menus and shopping bags are made of recycled paper, stamped with soy-based inks.

Investigating compost exchange with produce suppliers.

Location:
236 North 12th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(between Union and Driggs, across the street from McCarren park)

718.388.9444
www.urbanrusticnyc.com

Hours of Operation:
7 am to 10 pm; 7 days a week

Breakfast:
7 am – 12 pm
(coffee, pastry, fresh juices, granola, egg sandwiches, omelets with seasonal produce)

Lunch:
12 – 5 pm
(sandwiches with in-house roasted meats, daily soups, prepared salads, pressed Panini)

Special evening dishes:
5 – 10 pm
(table service with café menu in elevated seating area)

Weekend Brunch/Sat & Sun:
10 am – 4 pm
(table service with café menu in elevated seating area and patio)

Also check out the review in New York Magazine.

GBK has extensively covered City Councilman Bill de Blasio’s bill to ban styrofoam/polystyrene food service containers.

A similar bill was introduced on the state level in July by NY State Senator Liz Krueger — a Democrat from the 26th district — which NY State Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh — also a Democrat, from the 74th State Assembly District — is carrying in the NY State Assembly.

Both Sen. Krueger’s and Assemblyman Kavanagh’s districts cover the Upper East Side of Manhattan down to Gramercy Park including parts of: the Lower East Side, Union Square, Gramercy Park, Stuyvesant Square, Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village, East Midtown Plaza, Waterside Plaza, Kips Bay, Murray Hill, Tudor City, and Turtle Bay — see their district maps for more info.

Sen. Kreuger:

“Picture styrofoam, and you picture a product produced from petroleum that takes up to 500 years to fully disintegrate” … “The purpose of this bill is to help New York clean up our waste stream and become a more environmentally sustainable state. We have a real problem with needlessly creating too much waste. If we have the ability to create affordable alternatives we should make that leap.”

New York has the chance to be the first state to enact this legislation!

The bill — known as the Food Service Waste Reduction Act (S6402) — would allow the food service industry one year to find environmentally-friendly alternatives to the styrofoam products currently in use. It applies to restaurants, as well as food-service providers and vendors, such as supermarkets.

Krueger’s Act includes an “affordability” clause, which recognizes that not every styrofoam product currently has an environmentally-friendly alternative, and even in some cases where there is such an alternative, the much higher cost would place undue economic hardship on various businesses. Under her bill the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) will annually adopt a list of suitable, affordable alternative products that are compostable or recyclable; these alternatives must be within 15% of the cost of non-compostable or non-recyclable products currently in use.

For those interested in learning more, Sen. Krueger is hosting a panel on long-term sustainable solutions for NYS/NYC waste (click link for pdf).

Featuring:

• Barbara Warren - Sustainable South Bronx
• Steve Cohen - Columbia University’s Earth Institute
• Benjamin Miller - Author of Fat of the Land

The panel info:

September 18th, 2007
10am - 12pm
151 East 25th Street - MAP
7th Floor Conference Room
NY, NY

Go learn more about what you can do to reduce waste and support a sustainable neighborhood, city, state, country + world!

Well, it was supposed to be a green ice cream social, and not only was there no green ice cream, I didn’t see any ice cream at all! I either totally missed the rush or completely spaced it. Doh!

However, despite my ice cream whiff, it’s easy to understand why Habana Outpost is THE place to be during the summer in Brooklyn. For one thing, the atmosphere es muy caliente. The Outpost brings a rich multicultural scene of really beautiful people… But not only that…

The outdoor patio, the solar panels, the composting set-up, the use of bioplastic cups and utensils, the pedal-powered margarita mixer, the DJ spinnin’ nuthin’ but the uncut funk, and yes the awesome food and drinks really give the place a buzz that is palpable, fun, and edgy-green. In other words, all things GBK enjoys.

As for the ’social’ part, I was too busy downing margaritas and my shrimp quesadilla (YUM!) to do much other than chill with my friends, but I did see Graham Hill and Bart Bettencourt floating about, along with a smattering of other folks wearing green name tags.

It bears RE-mentioning that all of the proceeds from the event on Wednesday went to support Urban Studio Brooklyn’s summer 2007 workshop — from August 17-25 — during which NYC architecture students will design and build an extensive water reclamation system for the Outpost.

If the green stuff, the catfish burritos, the frozen mojitos, the sizzlin’ tunes, the gorgeous folks, and the hot summer nights don’t get you out, well, hate to break it to ya, but you might just be dead. No really, if that stuff doesn’t motivate you, check out the solar-powered Sunday Night Movie series (*AHEM* Flash Gordon 8/19) and keep up with the events calendar here or the calendar RSS feed here.