Orion > From the Front - Sustainability Complex - Building Green

TANDING IN THE CORNER of a tiny bakery on First Avenue in the East Village, I inhale the smell of rising dough as I watch the cream swirl in the bottom of my third cup of coffee. Stefan, the tall guy in the hemp jacket behind the counter, is talking about ceramic computers. Plastic is done, he says, and before long we'll all be toting ceramic and fiber optic laptops. I'm unconvinced, trying to picture a monstrous kiln in Silicon Valley.

It's 9:30 on a Friday night after a long week, and I've stopped here at my new favorite hang to find that it's been slightly (but not insignificantly) altered since my last visit: There's a telephone blinking red with messages behind the counter, where last week there was none. When I ask about the offending thing Stefan shrugs, shakes his head as he pours me more coffee.

"The bakery of the 21st century will be entirely free of petroleum-based products," he says, a bit dramatically. "I have this old ceramic phone in my basement I should have brought in." A ceramic phone sounds more reasonable than a computer, and it would look a lot better than the flashing eyesore perched next to the vintage 1936 cash register behind the recycled denim and bamboo countertop.

This place is new, open only since last December. I've found it to be a rejuvenating break on my commute to work, lining up alongside fellow New Yorkers to pick out the fattest muffins and wait for freshly-brewed coffee before hunkering down in an office for the rest of the waking day—or at least until lunch, when I'll mindlessly swipe a saran-wrapped sandwich from a refrigerated rack in my building's cafeteria. There's a sense of ownership and pride that comes along with the food here.

Still, I liked it better when there was no phone; the idea of a neighborhood joint so unhurried and unflustered by the outside world that lines of communication are unnecessary was delightful. For its first five months of existence the storefront didn't even have a sign—high stacks of cookies beckoned from the windowsill, and that was it. Now there's an elegant and precise line painted across the window followed by not so much a name as an imperative: "Build a Green Bakery."

As far as I know, this is the first truly "green" bakery in the world, serving organic foods and built entirely from recycled and ecologically-sound materials. The warm, minimalist interior looks modern—the floors are cork, the paint is milk-based, the walls are wheatboard and agricultural by-product. The bamboo and blue jean counter in the center of the room is full of organic cookies, muffins, and scones. But with only two prices—a dollar for a cup of coffee, two for any of the pastries—and no tables, chairs, cappuccino machine, salad bar, ambient jazz, or wireless internet, the bakery seems something of a relic in this ultra-hip neighborhood.

The bakery is owned by Maury Rubin, the chef of Manhattan's popular City Bakery, but that was a secret for the first couple of months after opening. Rubin wanted the store to take on a life of its own. So the title-less place (for the sake of convenience Rubin gave it a nickname, "Birdbath," a nod to the recycled sunflower seed in some of the walls) caused a small bit of consternation among New York foodies. Passersby would stop and stare from outside at the towering piles of cookies; some would come in and ask for an explanation, only to be greeted by silence and directed to a website, buildagreenbakery.com, by the hemp-clad waitstaff. Other onlookers would scurry by, put off by the lack of Starbucksian amenities. One regular still calls the place "el mysterioso." Now and then someone will leave in a huff when they're told that the organic coffee doesn't come in decaf.

Rubin chose the East Village storefront because it was previously home to an Italian bread bakery, Prince of Peace, for 30 years. Prince of Peace closed last September when the family ran out of interested generations. "I want people to see an evolution in time," Rubin says. "In the old bakery you'd buy loaf of bread; in the new bakery you buy an organic cookie. We went from a conventional model to a sustainable one: Instead of toxic chemicals and glues, now you're biodegradable and recyclable, and it doesn't take that much."

As a business model, Birdbath is, surprisingly, affordable and profitable. It cost only $10,000 to build and is pretty low maintenance. Rubin's been contacted by three startup companies looking for advice on materials, construction, and design. But Birdbath is also an ideal, a test case for small-scale sustainable commercial architecture and low-consumption organic production in the heart of the most money-driven city in the world.

As Wal-Mart ups its so-called organic retail output, demanding more product, the nature of organic has changed—organic goods now often come from enormous industrial farms that claim their title simply because they don't use pesticides. Birdbath, in contrast, sells on a small scale, but like many retailers who want to support true organic agriculture, Rubin finds himself in a familiar conundrum: Local ingredients are limited in quantity and only seasonally available. Rubin is as pragmatic as he is idealistic, so while he gets some goods from the Greenmarket in Union Square, a longstanding weekly farmers' market that attracts farmers from upstate New York and from New Jersey, much of his raw material comes from out of town. The flour is from a family-run mill in Utah and obviously takes oil to ship. " With suppliers, it’s not quite there yet," says Rubin. "There’s give and take. You can’t be consistent in all areas of green. It’s just not there right now."

He plans to open more Birdbaths elsewhere to bring small-scale sustainable architecture into the urban mainstream; but the more stores he opens, the less he will be able to rely on local sources like the Greenmarket. Rubin is undeterred. "People can have a field day criticizing the pursuit of going green because there are so many holes. But at the end of the day, we’ve done more good here than harm.”

The Birdbath project can seem a bit self-righteous. Along with the declaration on the window, there's a mission statement on the wall: "With awareness of organic food increasing, the time has come to match that awareness with the built environment where we eat," it reads. "This may be the most 'green' bakery anywhere, but we hope it's not the only one of its kind for very long." Rubin plans on tearing the place down every six months, composting and recycling his old materials, and rebuilding anew to publicize green construction methods, all the while documenting the process on his website. Next time around, the bakery will be built in the style of a California beach house.

Self-aggrandizing proclivities aside, I come to Birdbath for its authentic character—something that you more typically find in mom and pop shops that have been around for years, the types of increasingly rarefied businesses that one-stop shopping and drive-through meals threaten with extinction. There's something nice about knowing that at least some of the food you're eating comes from the farmer selling down the street, especially in a place like New York City where the rubric is don't ask, don't tell—we don't even want to know.

The regulars here come from all walks: businessmen, young hipsters, and old hippies still hanging on in a rapidly-changing neighborhood. A group of teachers from an Upper East Side school started to frequent the bakery after an elementary school student wrote a report on it. But the real draw is the coffee, which is exceptional.

I sip my fourth cup and listen to Stefan rant about how we’ve made it nearly impossible to live without petroleum. A steady stream of people passes outside. Some pause to look through the window; some poke their heads in, read the mission statement on the wall, chuckle and leave. Standing here in the window, I move from observer and observed, on show for the curious city.

As Stefan's monologue swings back to the post-petroleum future, I turn my back to the urban street scene and close my eyes; the smell of the dough from the kitchen rises up again, filling my senses. In my caffeine-induced trance state, I wonder if First Avenue will be lined with places like this ten years from now, or whether we'll all still be stuck in this same desperate black hole of over-consumption and dwindling resources.

My reverie is interrupted by a ringing in my own jacket pocket. Embarrassed, I dart outside – a cell phone just doesn’t seem right in here. Hopefully it never will.