Wild green yonder
Morris County has caught the green wave of environmentally responsible living that’s started to wash over the East Coast.
There are dozens of movers and shakers, from the corporate to the personal, making a difference here — too many to cover in a single magazine issue. To capture the momentum of their collective energy, Real Morris and realmorris.com have chosen to highlight the work of 14 people who are active in different sustainable fields such as fashion, food, education, medicine, building and business.
They bring to Morris County the luxurious fabrics of Fair Trade factory workers in Calcutta, the goodness of Amish and Mennonite vegetables, the latest in holistic dental technologies, great conversations with green-minded celebrities, and much more.
Morris is poised to go even more green in the future, as farmers start transitioning from traditional to organic growing and architects and developers become certified in the green building trade to be prepared for coming consumer demand. (A total of 37 green buildings have been constructed here, according to the U.S. Green Building Council.)
Morris also is home to some 75,000 acres of parklands owned by federal, state and county agencies, according to the Morris County Department of Planning & Development. That means the county is 25 percent open space. Judith Schleicher, president of the Morris County Park Commission, said she looks forward to even more green acreage.
The quality of life now and in the future is a subject that preoccupies green-minded residents who are joining forces in a number of ways, not the least of which is Morristown Step Ahead, a business-driven initiative to promote the greening of downtown Morristown.
In the meantime, Chester builder Chris Miller and Morristown architect Walt Kanzler, certified green professionals, are working on Greenovation, (www.greenovation.biz) an off-grid home to be built in Chester that will serve as an educational model for local homeowners.
In Mountain Lakes, Marnie Vyff, who runs an organic food coop and is pursuing a master’s degree in environmental management, is building a case to convert a building and 130 acres at the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital campus into an educational center where people can learn to grow their own food.
Brenda Klipper of Morris Township (www.brendaklipper.com) may represent the next generation of real estate agent. As an eco-broker, she scouts green projects for her clients and has the knowledge to suggest ways a home can be made more energy-efficient and sustainable.
Relatively new grassroots groups include Project Porchlight in East Hanover (www.projectporchlight.com), which encourages all homeowners to switch to energy-efficient lightbulbs, and the Holistic Moms Network (www.holisticmoms.org), which has two chapters in Morris.
There also are green enterprises of long standing in the county — Unity Charter School in Morristown (www.unity-nj.org), which has had a sustainability-based curriculum since 1998; Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, which incubates sustainable businesses, and the Sierra Club Loantaka Group (http://newjersey.sierraclub.org/Loantaka), active on the grassroots level.
Now, though, it’s time to sit back and enjoy the inspiring adventures of 14 local pioneers — and maybe find a way to get in the green swim of things. They all agree that every green act by every individual makes a difference.
As Nancy Vardaro, the nurse who led the initiative to green the operating rooms at Morristown Memorial Hospital, pointed out, “A lot of little pieces come together to make a big success.”
EDUCATION
THE GREEN DIVAS
Ages: Megan McWilliams, 45; Jenifer O’Neill, 48
Hometown: Live with their families in Boonton Township
Occupations: Writers, mothers, editors, radio show producers and co-hosts, marketing professionals, green product reviewers, foodies, bloggers, and commentators on low-stress sustainable living
Recent green accomplishments: Co-produce and co-host “Green Divas: fresh ideas for sustainable living,” a weekly Internet radio show 7 p.m. Thursdays on HomeGrownRadioNJ.org ; co-published Relevant Times magazine, 2006-2008; Megan writes blogs at TheGreenDivas.com , GreenOptions.com , AlternativeConsumer.com BestEcoStuff.com , BuyGreen.com
Metrics on publications: Relevant Times reached 80,000 readers monthly; blogs reach 100,000 readers monthly
Listeners who tune into The Green Divas on HomeGrownRadioNJ.org 7 p.m. Thursdays get an earful of friendly, insightful banter as Megan McWilliams and Jenifer O’Neill chat with each other and guests about the green issues of the day.
It’s for anyone — not just the green-inclined — and it’s all pleasant and easy to digest, which is the point.
“We feel there’s too much stress on, ‘If you throw out that plastic bag, you’re going to be responsible for melting the polar icecaps and the polar bears eating each other.’ That’s not our message,” McWilliams said.
“What we like to focus on is, ‘If you change one lightbulb, wow, look at all the things that happen.’ We like to play up the positive impact of all the little things people can do.”
Their philosophy of sustainable living, according to O’Neill, is about more than the environment. The duo covers eco-living, conscious kids and family issues. They review green products and post recipes on the blog. They interview lots of celebrities, including Ed Begley, Jr., Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson and Daryl Hannah.
The divas also get very local: There’s a movement afoot right here, they say, to create a more sustainable local economy. Listeners love to ask questions on how things work and for advice. A typical question: “Where do I go to get locally sourced healthy grass-fed beef?”
The goal of the divas is to just keep talking on the air till the planet is green. To keep adding to their YouTube interview video collection. To find sponsors for their shows.
NONPROFITS
DAVID GRANT
Age: 58
Hometown: Hoboken
Occupation: President, CEO, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, www.grdodge.org , since 1998; educator
Education: AB, English, Princeton University; MA, American Studies, University of Michigan
Green accomplishments: Spearheaded Morristown Parking Authority building, 14 Maple Ave., Morristown’s first green building, expected to achieve gold or platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification; founded the Mountain School of Milton Academy, an environmental studies program in Vermont for high school juniors, with his wife, Nancy Boyd Grant
Metrics on 14 Maple Avenue: Four stories; 35,000 square feet of office space; 791-car, multi-level parking garage; largest biowall in the nation; vegetative roof; high-efficiency HVAC (heating, ventilating, air-conditioning) system using geothermal wells; photovoltaic panels on the garage roof to supplement electricity; high-performance windows to allow light but eliminate heat gain; crushed recycled glass countertops, bamboo and cork floors and desks; salvaged and recycled woods and beams
The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation thought it was high time its offices reflected its green values and so was born its partnership with the Morristown Parking Authority. The result is a green jewel of a building known in Morristown simply as “14 Maple.”
While the first floor is home to the parking authority, the upper three are occupied by nonprofits.
The $8.3 million project features elegant green innovations, not the least of which is the nation’s largest biowall, a vertical garden of plants that sit in a layer of porous material attached to a concrete wall. The plants remove volatile organic compounds and carbon dioxide from the air before it passes through the wall and into the office spaces of the building.
There are other invisible features, pointed out David Grant, Dodge president and CEO. For one thing, the floors are raised, which means the walls between offices easily can be moved as opposed to when they are, more traditionally, connected to the slab of a floor.
“I hope this building is a model for nonprofits, for-profits, and government,” Grant said. “It’s meant to be a model of good design and construction based on certain principles that are not owned by any sector.”
Those include the health and productivity of the people in the building, its long-term financial viability and its environmental impact on the community and the Earth, both in its construction and operation.
When will green buildings become the norm? When people build to stay, Grant said. Then they will concentrate on long-term efficiencies. But not when they build to quickly sell.
In the meantime, he and the other tenants have been looking forward to Spring when they will park in the attached garage and walk into the building via the roof, where vegetation is planted and the panoramic view of Morristown is spectacular.
LAND/FOOD
MARNIE VYFF
Age: 46
Hometown: Mountain Lakes
Occupations: Graphic designer, partner in ecoLOGIC-design; master’s degree student in environmental management, Montclair State University
Recent green accomplishments: Since 2001 runs The Mountain Lakes Organic Coop, www.mountainlakesorganic.com , serving residents of Mountain Lakes, Denville, Parsippany, Boonton and Boonton Township for 25 years; environmental movie nights for The League of Women Voters of Mountain Lakes and CommunityGreen.org, a meetup group
Metrics on coop: Distributes more than 40 baskets of fresh foods from her garage per week
Awards: National League of Women Voters 2008 Pioneer Award for Green Community Project to the Mountain Lakes chapter
More than 40 families and individuals a week depend on Marnie Vyff’s weekly ritual of creating baskets brimming with fresh organic foods. Headquarters for The Mountain Lakes Organic Coop headquarters is her garage, which she has dedicated for that purpose.
The produce is ordered weekly from the Internet and delivered fresh the next day. Sometimes it comes from local places, such as Dégagé Gardens, a small organic herb, flower and vegetable farm in Rockaway. Mostly, though, the baskets are filled with produce from Pennsylvania suppliers, including some Amish and Mennonite vegetables.
“The Amish are very good examples for us for the way that we will need to live in 100 years,” said Vyff.
On Tuesdays and Fridays the coop families come to the garage to pick up their baskets, which go for $20 for a basic size to $40 for a large size.
“We’re less expensive than health stores,” Vyff said. “You get $30 worth of food in a $20 basket.”
The coop has averaged one new member per week for a long time. Why the extra effort for an undertaking that nets Vyff “a little bit of money”? While she always was green and agriculturally inclined, the five years she lived in Denmark deepened her commitment.
There she saw what was possible: A $9-a-gallon tax on oil as early as 30 years ago that forced people to pay or find alternative energies. The cutting-edge development of wind power.
“Since the ’70s Americans were very much caught up in progress and growth,” Vyff said. “In Denmark they don’t believe in growth. They believe in what is sustainable.”
To help educate local people about environmental issues here, Vyff holds movie nights at various local locations, showing films such as “FLOW: For Love of Water,” “Food Matters” and “Kilowatt Ours.”
BEAUTY/FASHION
LESLIE JOY
Hometown: Florham Park
Occupation: Co-owner, Joy Organic, www.joyorganic.com , with her sister, Victoria Dammer
Education: BA, Fairleigh Dickinson University; executive chef degree, Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School
Green accomplishment: Manufacturing and distribution of Fair Trade certified organic cotton clothing and bedding since 2005; penetrated all U.S. markets within one year
Joy Organic line: Certified organic cotton activewear, yoga apparel, tees, tops and tunics; reusable shopping bags; babywear, crib sheets, towels, blankets, sweaters and more. Products online at www.joyorganic.com; distributed to stores nationwide; available locally at Whole Foods Markets, Organic Nest in Bernardsville and Go Lightly in Montclair
Timetable: Joy Organic, with a showroom in Whippany, launched an e-commerce division in November 2008
Awards: 2008 World of Possibilities Award from CommunityEarth.net
Calcutta, with its 15 million people and neighborhoods teeming with street vendors, is a second home to Leslie Joy of Joy Organic, a certified organic cotton product manufacturer. For two weeks every quarter she visits the 150,000-square-foot Fair Trade factory where her merchandise is made—a factory in which she invested to improve conditions for its workers.
“It’s really funny to be me in Calcutta. Just being blonde and 5 feet 11 inches, I feel like a rock star,” she said. “As soon as I arrive the people within a block of my office all know I’m there. I walk down the street and they say, ‘How are ya’, Jersey?’”
It takes this kind of commitment—to invest, to travel, to care—for Joy Organic to be sure its lines of activewear, yoga apparel and bedding for adults and babies are made in a socially and environmentally conscientious way. The company deals with Germany-based Control Union Certifications, a group of companies that certifies cotton from the field all the way to the manufacturer.
“If your manufacturing plant can be certified by them, it’s a ticket to get a lot of orders from people like me who really care,” Joy said, “people who want to buy and sell the real deal.”
Joy Organic, which creates private label clothing for some American mainstream manufacturers in addition to its own line, conducts customer seminars nationwide to educate the public on the importance of paying the “right price” for a product. That’s a price high enough to fairly pay the grower and factory worker who created it.
Yet, she added, the right price is not necessarily a high one. All Joy Organic products sell for less than $50 retail—not enough to grow rich but enough to earn a living.
Besides, her job pays a distinctive unusual benefit—getting to know the people of Calcutta. They simply work with what they have, she said, and proceed joyfully through their days. By their example they have taught her a priceless lesson in what it means to be happy.
HOMES
BILL ASDAL
Age: 57
Hometown: Chester Township
Occupation: Builder/remodeler, www.asdalbuilders.com ; teacher; author
Education: MA, Administration and Supervision and 52 post-graduate credits in Environmental Education
Awards: Member, National Remodeling Hall of Fame; 2006 National Green Remodeler of the Year (National Association of Home Builders); former chairman, Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH), Washington D.C.; founder, Professional Remodeler magazine
Recent green accomplishments: Black River Commons, Chester Borough, 10 green apartments for 55+ community, opened September 2008
Metrics on Black River Commons: Units range from 2,000 to 2,700 square feet; tight construction to minimize air loss results in monthly utility bills of $64 to $150, depending on number of occupants
Chester builder Bill Asdal reads lots of news stories about energy and cars but, after a lifetime of building, he can’t help but think of energy and homes.
“Thirty-nine percent of domestic energy is spent in homes and buildings,” he said. “We have 125 million homes in America—3.4 million in New Jersey. They all need to be tighter. Homeowners are paying to heat or cool interior space.”
But their money evaporates as that warm or cool air escapes through holes in their houses.
It’s also no secret, he said, that many older New Jersey homeowners struggle to keep up with the cost of maintaining big houses well beyond the time they need all that space. When maintenance is deferred, homes leak energy, drain bank accounts and create financial anxiety.
The time has come, Asdal said, for Americans to stop focusing on profits and losses and start efficiently managing the assets they have, especially their homes. In some cases, that may mean selling a home, banking the capital made on the sale, and renting a green three-story luxury apartment like those at Black River Commons, a 55-plus community Asdal recently built in Chester Borough. All but one unit was occupied in a few months.
After residents pay rent and energy expenses kept low by geothermal heating and cooling, Asdal said, they can enjoy a manageable right-sized living space and use the money they would have spent on home maintenance, property taxes and home insurance payments to enjoy their lives.
“Moving to Florida doesn’t have to be the only option,” Asdal said. Not if Morris County and New Jersey start encouraging the building of more communities such as Black River Commons, which he is holding up as a model.
What stands in the way of the model taking off here?
Black River Commons took 10 months to build and six-and-a-half years to get approved, Asdal explained, a reflection of expensive and difficult regulatory mazes that make construction innovation and technological changes difficult to achieve. Also, he said, Morris County has to allow density housing so its longtime residents can have luxury rental options as they grow older.
“We’ve got lots of opportunities in Morris County to develop along historic corridors for transportation,” he said. “We have Netcong on a rail line, Boonton on a rail line, lots of places that remain underutilized.”
BUSINESS
MARTY BROOKS
Age: 46
Hometown: Succasunna
Occupation: Operations manager, Suburban Furniture and Mattress, www.suburbanfurniture.com
Education: Kearny High School
Recent green accomplishment: Reducing waste at Suburban Furniture by installing an auger compactor and creating an extensive recycling program
Metrics on Suburban Furniture: Waste costs lowered by 40 percent; annually recycles 220,000 pounds of cardboard, plastic and steel combined as well as 25,000 pounds of Styrofoam and 1,000 mattresses and boxsprings.
Awards: 2008 Grinding Trash to a Halt Award (Morris County Municipal Utilities Authority); 2009 Certificate of Appreciation (Roxbury Township)
Marty Brooks doesn’t waste a thing. Not a word. Not a minute. Not the smallest piece of Styrofoam.
When he arrived at Suburban Furniture and Mattress four years ago as operations manager, the company was recycling cardboard with a vertical baler. One employee spent all his time feeding the machine.
“Not economic,” Brooks said. The machine was recycled, the employee reassigned to other duties and the cardboard sent to Trinity Recycling in Mine Hill. That was just the beginning.
“A long time ago I learned waste had a dollar value but a negative impact on our environment,” Brooks said. “Instead of paying to get rid of it, have it pay you back and, at the same time, give it another life and keep the planet green.”
At Suburban Brooks reduced garbage by 40 percent by aggressively recycling and buying a used auger compactor that can crush any kind of garbage so thoroughly that it takes his crew eight to 10 weeks to fill one 40-yard container. Nowadays that’s how frequently the container is taken to the Mount Olive Transfer Station.
Before the compactor, the company was running a trip to the landfill every three weeks. The savings is substantial.
“There’s a transport charge,” Brooks said. “A container like that costs $225 to take over to Mount Olive. In addition to that, you have a $95-a-ton tipping fee for disposal.”
Recycling, on the other hand, usually nets a company rebates. Brooks has employees separate materials into garbage and recycling streams as they unpack merchandise, resulting in hundreds of thousands of pounds of recycling. Also, every plastic bag in the place is used three times for different purposes before it is finally recycled.
The new 40,000-square-foot Suburban warehouse Brooks assisted in setting up three years ago is energy efficient in itself. For instance, it uses motion-sensor lights in aisles. The nearby retail store upgraded its lighting, too, using 60-watt IRC (infrared candescent) bulbs that give off the same luminosity as 75 watts. The improvement increases the life span of a single bulb from 2,500 to 4,200 hours.
Brooks also does not neglect another kind of recycling—humanitarian aid.
“If people come here because they need something, we’ll go through a whole pile of mattresses to get them something decent,” he said, adding Suburban routinely donates to a battered women’s shelter, the Roxbury C.A.R.E.S. Network and many more charities.
MEDICINE
DR. DEREK FINE
Age: 48
Hometown: Randolph
Occupation: General dentist, 22 years; co-owner Aesthetic Family Dentistry, Denville, www.aestheticfamilydentistry.com , a green dental practice since 1991
Education: DMD, University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey
Green accomplishments: Creating a green dental practice, including biocompatibility testing, amalgam-free fillings, digital x-rays, safe sterilizing solutions, choice of alternative natural dental products, and more
The x-rays at Aesthetic Family Dentistry in Denville are digital. Doctors Derek Fine and Alan Steiner like it that way. No traditional x-ray packets and films means no lead and no chemical fixer or developer in the office.
The holistic dentists also offer biocompatibility testing, which entails sending a patient hair or blood sample to a lab that sends back a list of dental materials safe to use in that patient’s mouth.
“We do it for people who are compromised or have sensitivities or allergies,” Fine explained.
Amalgam fillings—made of silver, mercury and other metals—are never placed. Instead the practice offers fillings made of composite resin, porcelain or gold. Mercury waste and vapors are not good for anyone, said Fine, adding that strict protocols are followed when amalgams are removed to protect both patients and staff.
“We also use an amalgam recovery system,” he added, “so that none of the waste goes into the public sewers. It gets transported by a registered medical waste carrier.”
Afterwards, patients are given an all-natural detox remedy to help get the metals out of their system.
Soon such amalgam disposal will be law, Fine added. But this practice, which has grown progressively greener for the past 18 years, always has liked to be ahead of the curve.
Depending on their preference, patients will find in their goodie bags all-natural or recycled dental products, such as floss and toothpicks, or conventional products. Fine, though, is not a believer in fluoride or sodium lauryl sulfate, both common ingredients in conventional toothpastes. At this moment the doctors are in the market for toothbrushes made of recycled plastic.
Aesthetic Family Dentistry also uses non-hazardous sterilizing solutions, oil-free air compressors and other green innovations, including energy-efficient lightbulbs and MacDent Pro software as an interim step to becoming a paperless office.
