I went on a green building bus tour on Saturday, organized by an excellent New York non-profit organization called Green Home NYC (they give free lectures, organize tours and the like). We covered the Green Bakeryin the East Village, the Queens Botanical Garden, a Williamsburg Daycare, The Verdesian and The Solaire. The most amazing part of the tour were the excellent sandwiches provided as lunch. None of the green buildings blew me away—no true shifts in the-way-we-live-paradigm. A lot of stuff just makes sense anyway but we simply have been slacking in the past decades with for example, building decently insulated buildings, smart design and choice of material. Most green features weren’t new concepts, except for the green roofs and the solar panels if we consider time to be relative.

Don’t get me wrong. I am happy that the greener (!) building methods are speeding up significantly. I am glad all government buildings starting next year have to be built “green”. The steps we needed to take 20, or at least 10 years ago are finally taking shape.

I want to make some comments about details, accompanied by some pictures from the tour: I am all for decentralizing power (in both senses). Large power plants which sit on the periphery of our city are owned by large corporations who do not care about smart concepts or how much power we actually need. Naturally, they want to expand their profits, not be more efficient or less polluting. “They” don’t even live here.

There is also some loss of power while transporting it from plant to end-user and large amounts of pollution are concentrated in certain areas (pollution always travels though of course). Some smaller plants sit where people haven’t had enough political clout to do something about it including the pollution that seems to be linked to the asthma rates in those neighborhoods.

The Verdesian has its own little power plant (natural gas), just as the Bryant Park#1 building will have. I believe there are great advantages to having the sources of power (including a bit of solar, which never seems to provide more than a few percent of the power required) on site. There is a much bigger incentive to be clean and efficient when catering directly to those who use it.

The bike storage available at the these buildings is something every large apartment building should provide, I mean, we do allow and accept private property (cars) of others to clutter our streets where they are relatively safe but safe space for much smaller more sustainable transportation vehicles (bikes) seems to be a luxury good.

Capturing rainwater for irrigation is good and seems another completely common sense thing to do. My SUV driving, non-green uncle installed a rainwater capture tank underneath his front lawn 10 years ago to feed the toilet flushes - because it made sense to him since where he lives water is expensive.

I also like the decentralized water treatment plant idea but what I saw at The Solaire confused me a bit. When I asked about where the “particles” go after they are separated from the water, the nice (and good looking, as everybody seems to be at The Solaire) guide told me “transported to the cities sewer system”? I wonder how that happens, since without water, “things” won’t flow, so are the materials picked up by trucks and transported with increased costs and presumably some pollution across town? Someone who knows better enlighten me! The remaining water is cleansed and used for the toilets in the building.

If I remember my art class correctly, Klimt, the Austrian artist, thought up a green building over a hundred years ago in Vienna, where the used water was expelled onto a green roof where it flowed through the grass, thereby cleansed and returned into the building for all uses. While I would like to add some extra cleansing features to this process before I drink it, I like the idea that there is no need for much additional water. The same water can be used over and over again: a building self-sufficient with its supply!