Today’s NY Post Real Estate section features a really nice article — Fresh Start: It’s Easy Being Green — about green building and energy conservation. It’s a great read filled with stats, tips, and real-world examples of New Yorkers going green in their homes or helping develop the green building industry in our city.

As can be expected, Brooklyn is heavily represented. We start with Sarah Beatty, founder and CEO of Brooklyn based Green Depot:

“The last five years have seen exponential growth in the number of high-quality [green] products that have come to market.”

Then me:

One good starting point, says Ethan Oringel, publisher of the greenbrooklyn.com blog, is giving your apartment an energy audit. Take out your heating and electric bills, make a checklist of all the ways you use energy and look to see if any can be made less wasteful.

It sounds mundane, but given that 80 percent of New York City’s greenhouse emissions come from its buildings, making sure your home uses energy efficiently is one of the greenest things you can do.

Then Eitan Baron, the brains behind Brooklyn Greenstone (and the guy in the photo above):

“To me, [proper sealing] is worth as much as any solar panel on the market,” says developer Eitan Baron, who recently did a green renovation on the Park Slope brownstone that houses his 1,700-square-foot duplex. “It’s the parts you don’t see that are the most important.”

[...]

This work hasn’t just helped save the environment — it’s saved Baron money, as well. He estimates his heating bills this winter were about 60 percent less than they would have been in a typical brownstone.

Also mentioned was one of GBK’s favorite companies from last year’s Green Buildings NY convention and expo — green roof and green wall start-up, NYC-based Greensulate.

Check out the full article at NYPost.com.

And many thanks to the author of the article, Adam Bonislawski, for both including myself and the Green Brooklyn website in the article and helping raise awareness about the importance of energy efficiency and green building in NYC.

Join this crash course on greening your school — from the issues you’ll encounter installing a green roof to creative ways of incorporating sustainability themes into the classroom. Join local experts to discuss easy to implement projects, ways of getting environmental projects funded, opportunities for nonprofit partnerships, and what has (and hasn’t) worked in local schools.

Panelists Include:

Alive Structures, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education and Center for the Urban Environment.

Where:
Center for the Urban Environment
168 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215 (btw 2nd and 3rd Aves)
718-788-8500

When:
Thursday, March 19
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

How:
Train: Take F train to 4th Avenue or R train to 9th Street.
Walk over 2 blocks north to 7th Street and 1st Avenue west to 3rd Avenue.

$10 Suggested Donation

Limited Space. Pre-registration recommended: bcueinfo@bcue.org

Every Third Thursday of the Month, New Yorkers from across the boroughs converge in the Center’s state-of-the-art green building to learn and live sustainably. Drop in and join these exciting screenings, workshops, and discussions and be inspired to take action! On-site recycling: CFL light bulbs, cell phones, and alkaline batteries accepted.

Find out more about what we do at www.thecue.org

Buy in Brooklyn expands its educational mission to include a number of nonprofit and local groups who are interested in sustainability. From Local Labels to the Sustainable Business Network NYC (SBNYC) and Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation (SBIDC), the breadth of participants speaks to the campaign’s interest in supporting a sustainable, local economy.

“There are a number of local groups working hard on this issue,” said Rebeccah Welch, an organizer for the campaign — “and they increasingly see the value in working collaboratively.” This includes the Borough President’s Office who has taken Park Slope’s lead and brought the local first idea, Shop Brooklyn, to even wider audiences.

Shopping at local small businesses not only represents an investment in your community. But the links to sustainability are often more direct. “Locally owned businesses tend to make more local purchases,” argued Welch, “which, from a green standpoint, has a clear impact on reducing a neighborhood’s carbon footprint.”

Check out the details of the Park Slope Buy in Brooklyn campaign below.

Event:
Buy in Brooklyn’s Second Annual “Snowflake Celebration”

Sponsor:
Park Slope Chamber of Commerce

Date/Time:             
December 4^th and December 11^th from 7:00 pm until close

Place:
Park Slope, Brooklyn

Contact:                 
buyinbrooklyn@gmail.com

Website:
www.buyinbrooklyn.com

In these times an informed populace is critical as geo-political decisions that effect our lives are made each day.

Today, for example, the Bush Administration is trying to convince us that we can drill our way out of the Global Warming crisis, while General Motors is announcing substantial layoffs and elimination of their dividend.

Things seem to be spiraling out of control and admittedly there are many complexities in the story of greenhouse gas emissions and what we should do to mitigate their impact. As a great philosopher from Brooklyn once said “it ain’t easy”.

To gain more insight and become more aware of the dimensions of the problems we face I have just read a fantastic summary of the issues and advances in sustainable technologies written by Mr. Brian Dumaine — editorial director of Fortune Small Business — entitled “The Plot to Save the Planet: How visionary entrepreneurs and corporate titans are creating real solutions to global warming” (you can buy it via Amazon.com).

In this book, Mr. Dumaine describes the background and how we got to where we are, the myriad number of investments and initiatives aimed at advancing the state of the art in alternative energy technologies and the collaborative efforts between leadership in private and public sectors.

The reader will be impressed by the potential for advances in cellulosic ethanol, thin-film solar energy, wind farms, green residential and commercial construction techniques, changes in the transportation modes and even the role of urban/semi-urban areas. The book is informative, thought provoking, and provides a basis for an informed citizen to become more active and part of the discussion particularly in a critically important election year.

Read the full review by clicking the link below……..

Tuesday May 6th is Idle-Free Day in NYC!

Press Conference:
Tuesday, May 6th
10am
City Hall Steps
Go here to see the flyer for the press conference.

As we know from the post this week, NYC’s air quality is, well, ahem, sub-par. Okay, it’s horrible. 43% of Brooklynites are at risk of health problems each day because of pollution — most of which is from vehicles’ tailpipes.

Find out more truths about idling and how it harms your health, hurts air quality, wastes fuel, and is against the law!

Join a growing chorus of New Yorkers who are tired of breathing exhaust from idling cars and trucks!

Here are some resources on what you can do if you are: an individual, a school, a community group, a business, or a policy-maker.

Stay tuned at the IFNY website or on the Idle-Free NYC blog.