by
CAMPRIELLO:
City Bakery, in some ways, is a typical organic bakery. The cookies, salads and soups it sells are made from organic ingreedients. Sara Weeks Dima is the general manager. She said the bakery has always been a place to eat with the environment at back of the mind. But that isn't all.
AX WEEKS DIMA (12.4 seconds)
It's about the building environment where you're eating that food; sustainable building materials, good air quality, no VOCs, no formaldehyde, reusing found items, vintage items.
CAMPRIELLO:
The management wants the stores to be eco-friendly, but doing that can cost more than using conventional building materials.
Construction of the Birdbath on First Avenue took about two months to complete and cost about twelve thousand dollars.
During construction, Weeks Dima said contractors purchased regular plywood for the walls, but she made them take it back to the supplier. The walls were covered with board made of pressed wheat straw, which cost more than plywood. But it was important to management that no new trees were felled for construction.
But other materials are scavenged and cost next to nothing.
For example, inside the Charles Street Birdbath, there is a large, plastic display—more like cubbies housing stacks of cookies—hanging behind a display table, which looks an awful lot like a packing crate.
AX WEEKS DIMA (13.6 seconds)
So the cookie display on the wall is made out of recycled plastic, and it was shipped to us by the manufacturer in a giant shipping crate, the way art or furniture is and rather than take that crate and put it out with the garbage, we cut it into pieces and made the base of our display table out of it.
CAMPRIELLO:
A sink to the left of the display was taken from another location, and other display crates were donated.
AX WEEKS DIMA: (11.9 seconds)
The sink we pulled out of another location, where we weren't using the sink like the dish washing sink, the little hand sink is antique, so that's used, the crates we use for display we got off a farmer at the Greenmarket.
CAMPRIELLO:
City Bakery tries to offset the energy it uses with various methods. It gives its used cooking oil to one of the farmers at Greenmarket on Union Square who has a biodiesel generator/converter, and uses the oil to heat its buildings and to run farm equipment. What doesn't go to the farmer is sold to a company that sends it to be converted into vehicle fuel and then sells that fuel to customers.
City Bakery further reduces its own vehicle exhaust by transporting goods between the three New York stores via a green and yellow bicycle rickshaw. Raw materials come from markets as close to New York as possible. On top of lowering emissions of delivery trucks, Weeks Dima says it also cuts shipping costs.
AX WEEKS DIMA (1.8 seconds)
Definitely, definitely, definitely.
CAMPRIELLO:
She says electricitythat powers the bakerys is replaced with wind energy, she says.
AX WEEKS DIMA (7.6 seconds)
We purchase 100% wind power for all of our locations. We work with a company called Community Energy.
CAMPRIELLO:
A representative of Community Energy said that the kilowatts of energy used by a business such as the bakery, are tallied up, and Community Energy sells that amount of wind-generated energy to power companies to go into their power grids. She said revenues from sales of that energy goes to support wind farms around the country.
Weeks Dima said that the arrangement costs about 10% more than it would if wind energy wasn't involved, but it's worth it.
AX WEEKS DIMA (9 seconds)
We want them to be building more wind farms and less coal-fired power plants so we're willing to pay a premium for the electricity that we get to support wind farms.
CAMPRIELLO:
Weeks Dima is aware that the practices of her business are experimental. As a third Birdbath location in Manhattan is on its way, she thinks the practices are working and she hopes other business with be designed with the environment in mind.
SOC: Columbia Radio News, Susan Campriello.