by Ben Jervey

The typical office is a battleground of personal tastes and habits. So what, then, is the environmentally-conscious worker to do? How could you possible work to “green” your workspace without becoming the the office nuisance? We talked to Roberto Rhett, the director of Green Spaces NY, an eco-friendly co-working office share, about how to lower the impact of your workplace without driving all your co-workers nuts. Here are 6 easy tips:

1) Switch your energy provider to 100% alternative power sources. Green Spaces NY uses Community Energy Inc. through ConEdison Solutions. Its only a few cents more expensive but you are voting with your dollars and this is something that will not affect staff in any way! [For renewable energy anywhere, check out Green-e.

2) Change the light bulbs in the office. If you find good quality, high efficiency bulbs, there’s no negative impact on your co-workers, but the energy savings are significant.

3) Work on sourcing more sustainable supplies–from 100% recycled paper to cleaning products to fair trade coffee. The Green Office has great selection, and the price premium generally isn’t prohibitive. (At Green Spaces NY, they also use a sodastream machine so that workers can make bubbly bevs without having to buy cans of soda from a vending machine.

4) Recycling and composting can quickly cut down up to 2/3 of your waste stream. Recycling is relatively easy: put big, well-labeled bins everywhere there’s a trash can. Composting is tougher, and messier. But if you do work with a gung-ho bunch, why not go ahead and buy a planter for the window and you can grow tomatoes or other veggies using the compost as nutrient rich soil.

5) Use timers. For the thermostat, so that the office isn’t unnecessarily heated or cooled when nobody’s in there. For the computers when they’re not in use. For lights when nobody’s in a room. Nobody is effected because nobody’s there!

6) For new furniture–desks, couches, tables–vintage and refurbished items are generally popular, since it creates a bit of character for a workspace. It also obviously prevents them from ending up in the landfill, and cuts down demand for new goods to be produced.

For good measure, as Ambassador, I’d like to add one:

• Plants! Everyone loves plants. Nobody does not like plants. Plants keep office air fresher and cleaner, make workers feel better, and plenty of studies have shown that they actually increase workplace productivity. So get some greenery up in there.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user Office Now

About the author

GOOD is the integrated media platform for people who want to live well and do good. We are a company and community for the people, businesses, and NGOs moving the world forward. GOOD’s mission is to provide content, experiences, and utilities to serve this community.GOOD currently produces a website, videos, live events, and a print magazine. Launched in September 2006, the company has garnered praise for its unique editorial perspective and fresh visual aesthetic and is quickly positioning itself as a significant new voice in our culture.

Click here to view the article on its original site.

GoodCompany "Un-Panel" at GreenSpaces NY

Last week's GoodCompany Ventures event at the TriBeCa, NY, offices of Green Spaces brought together some of the top minds in early stage and patient capital investing, including Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jacob Gray from Murex Investments, Roger Ehrenberg of IA Venture Strategies, and Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund, along with yours truly as the "un-moderator."

A great dialogue on our "un-panel" ranged from balancing long-term impact with maximizing returns to the need for solid metrics for social return.

[Hoping to have a link to video of the panel here next week.]

Four GoodCompanys  from the inaugural class of 2009 presented, including Black Gold Biofuels, Couchange, CalendarFly, and PublicStuff.

Roger Ehrenberg wrote a thoughtful post on his Information Arbitrage blog about the need for a new model for investing in "social" impacts and Jason Keramidas wrote a recap on the GoodCompany blog.

Applications for the 2010 Incubator are being accepted here. (Disclosure: I am on the Advisory Board of GoodCompany Ventures.)

View the article at The Energy Collective.

eco deal of the day – Green Spaces NY

"Green Spaces is the kind of workplace President Obama would like more of. It groups together environmentally driven small businesses; green startups that could drive job creation in America."

- Caroline Hepker, BBC World News

Click above to play the video and see the rest of the segment.

From the front area drenched in natural light, to the back room communal coffee kitchen -- where composting and recycling are enthusiastically embraced -- nearly two dozen businesses share one mind when it comes to environmental and sustainability issues.

"There's a lot of great interest right now amongst the entrepreneur community to find a collaborative workspace that's socially minded where people can get together and feel good about the world while they do their work. In the past month alone, our business has doubled," said Marissa Feinberg of Green Spaces.

For those who pay about $500 a month for work space, it goes beyond natural light and composting.

"Design with sustainability in mind. From the furniture that you see, it's all been refurbished, repurposed. It's been sourced directly from the street, from the sidewalk," said Roberto Rhett of Green Spaces. "It adds a creative atmosphere and a different feeling than your normal cubicle office space would have."

There are also low power consumption computers, experiments in natural decorating and hanging art made from repurposed materials.

"It looks good, people feel more comfortable about art especially if its green," said artist Susan Benarcik.

Green Spaces is hoping to attract a new breed of ecopreneur -- people with a keen appreciation for the concept of sustainability, and an understanding of the power of ideas.

"I wanted to have a platform to balance off ideas of other people, how to make my business more sustainable. In turn, I feel better about my product and so do my customers," said clothing designer Designer Sonia Tay.

Green Spaces also appears to be friendly when it comes to creating jobs.

"We've had several interns come into our program who have been hired with the Green Spaces company," Feinberg said.

In the TriBeCa office center, as well as in two more they are opening in other cities, green is translating to green for these ecopreneurs. 

by Seth Leitman Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The purpose of Green Spaces is to connecting green or eco friendly change makers through a small business setting.  This in turn helps businesses really grow.  Small business always needs a place to go, expand and develop into a mature business.  Having a space where you can meet with business colleagues, get the job done and learn about going green all in one.  The place even has space where people can have events or eco friendly parties for the sake of launching a book, promoting a movie or letting your business have a location.  They call it SalonEco!!!

They have incubator laced with old jeans since one of the companies located at the office refurbishes jeans to reduce the customer’s carbon footprint.  This company is called Denim Therapy.  These open and airy cubicles had some regular clients that had their office stuff at the desk. 

In the front is a mini retail space location for your internet website to have a presence in the City.  This is really important for small businesses since when I use to be Managing Member of a retail business they ALWAYS wanted a “STORE LOCATION”.  This will help businesses convert potential clients to customers more effectively.

The brick laden walls provide a lofty feel.  This provides a feeling of home; like you feel part of a community of green businesses.  It’s cool how it all really started.  Green Spaces started as an office and has now become home to hundreds of environmental innovators and stomping grounds for cutting edge entrepreneurs.

Hey, they even offer a one day FREE PASS to check out the place!Now, Green Spaces has:

• Over 10,000 readers to their newsletter
• 70 companies
• a website and blog that gets over 10,000 visitors per month
• a real venue to create multiple levels of change for the Green economy in New York City.

Green Spaces New York not only offers work space, but is also a sustainable venue for events, fundraisers, supper clubs, art gallery showings, film screenings (as when I came here they screened The Great Green Smoke Screen) pop-up markets, workshops, classes, meet-up groups, and more!

The Features and Amenities are:

• Access to beautiful open loft space with exposed brick and alley
• Full Kitchen Access
• Promotion of your event to the NYC Green community

Green Spaces NY has many different membership levels:

Full-Time Desk Space: Have a desk with a lamp and filing cabinet. 

Lounge Desk Space: Access a floating desk space in their funky cool "lounge area". 

Then they have this thing called drop-in space for when you just drop-in; duh.They have all the amenities of a regular office, such as a vintage desk, filing cabinet, lamps, chairs, internet, printers, Copier, and Fax machines, a place to call your business home; aka a mailbox, conference rooms, interns, workshops, GREEN EVENTS, a kitchen and FREE COFFEE!! YEAH!!!

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Marissa Feinberg Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer.  Athough when I met up with Marissa at the Green Space location and I was able to tour the spot, I asked Marissa about where this is all leading.  I mean this type of business incubator concept for green companies could be in cities nation and I don't know worldwide, she agreed.  "We are really becoming the place for social change makers to unite and grow.  We are looking at Los Angeles and other cities around the world where we can further the Green Economy. We have become so much more than we were set up to be.  We are much more than an office; we are a happening hub where new business ideas are formed everyday.  We have become a catalyst of thousands of global conversions that are bringing world changing action."

For more on this interview and more about Green Spaces, go to my website at Green Living Guy by clicking here. Click here to read the story on Greenopia.com.

Eric Dalski, builder of green rooftops and walls, at Green Spaces, a co-working space in TriBeCa.

At Shared Offices, How Green Is My Work Space

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

Published: February 14, 201

Hunched over their computers on a recent afternoon, two brothers were sketching plans to build a green roof for an elementary school in Brooklyn. One row and three desks away, a woman was working on an environmentally friendly fashion project, a little black dress that can be worn 365 ways.

Nearby, an information technology consultant was briefing a client on how cloud computing could save her money while also saving the environment. And in a corner toward the end of the long room of desks and chairs, a young man was surrounded by stacks of jeans mailed in to his company for repair and reuse.

These are the offices of Green Spaces, a co-working space in TriBeCa that is home to environmentally focused start-up companies. Since it opened in September, it has attracted about 20 “ecopreneurs,” as the office’s founder, Jennie Nevin, calls them.

“The green movement is about collaborating and working together,” Ms. Nevin said. “The idea here is to create a hub.”

Across the country, other co-working spaces are trying to go green by recycling, composting and shifting to renewable sources of energy. But some, like Green Spaces, go further, branding themselves as the office space of choice for small environmental ventures.

Ms. Nevin, who has two partners, opened a branch of Green Spaces in Denver in September and plans to expand to Los Angeles as well.

In Brooklyn’s Dumbo section, a similar space called Green Desk, whose electricity relies entirely on wind power and which offers amenities like recycled furniture, has also attracted entrepreneurs in environmental fields.

After filling more than 80 desks, Green Desk expanded from one floor to four, reaching capacity at 500 desks. It then opened a second location nearby, with an additional 150 desks. It will soon install solar panels, offer loaner bicycles, build a rooftop garden and open a space where its tenants and other eco-conscious retailers can sell their merchandise, said Uri Zucker, the office manager.

Green Desk was envisioned by the Brooklyn developer Jack Guttman, who plans to open two more locations on properties that he owns in Downtown Brooklyn and in Williamsburg.

The rent charged is comparable to that of other co-working outfits, tenants said. At Green Desk, a single desk starts at $299 a month. At Green Spaces, a desk is $550 a month.

While it is hard to pin down how many green-themed working spaces exist across the nation, they seem to share a common demographic. Most of the people they attract are young professionals who believe that a cooperative ethos is crucial to the green business movement, notwithstanding an equal embrace of financial savvy and a competitive spirit.

Ms. Nevin is 31, and her partners are 28 and 29. Many of their tenants are in their 20s.

“This is about a different way of doing business,” said Ms. Nevin, who previously worked as an investment specialist for Merrill Lynch and said she was always passionate about the environment.

“It’s certainly different from Wall Street, where it was all about what you did,” she said. “This is all about what we can do.”

Jeff Kaplan, 30, the founder of New Living, a co-working space for green professionals above his home-furnishings store by the same name in Houston, echoed her sentiments.

“Of course, if the business can’t make a profit, then it’s not sustainable,” Mr. Kaplan said. “We have to be profitable, but this is also about sharing resources and ideas. The movement is so new that we need to learn together.”

His space is home to a green event planner, a sustainable construction firm and an environmentally friendly cleaning service, among other businesses. The ventures tend to share clients and, when possible, work jointly on projects.

New Living is flooded with requests for internships from students and new graduates and does its best to accommodate them, Mr. Kaplan said. Most are unpaid. “There are so many people that want green jobs,” he said. “One of our businesses has 10 interns.”

At Green Spaces, Ms. Nevin is looking for financial sponsors to help cover intern salaries for high school and college students. Last semester, she raised enough to support one student from Columbia University and another from Harlem Renaissance High School.

The rest — from 5 to 10 — work at no charge, and she tries to rotate them among the start-up businesses so they can be exposed to as many environmental avenues as possible.

Some of the internships have turned into jobs: One of her partners and the space’s chief operations officer started out as interns, as did an employee of Denim Therapy, the jeans repair business.

Basing a company at an environmental co-working space can give an entrepreneur added credibility, said Abraham Slavi, who publishes “Our Green Book,” a directory of green businesses, out of his office at Green Desk.

“It was a place we were proud of, that we could be proud to invite visitors to,” he said.

At both Green Desk and Green Spaces, plants are everywhere, the sunlight streams in, and everyone washes his or her own coffee cups.

On a recent morning at Green Spaces, Eric and Mark Dalski, the brothers who build green rooftops and green walls, were placing about 30 small plants into felt inserts on a panel they had mounted on a wall. They plan to grow the plants hydroponically, with nutrient-enriched water and no soil.

The wall is a test bed for a client who wants a green wall installed in his home on the Upper West Side. The brothers will experiment with different amounts of nutrients and varieties of plants.

“Certainly this would be harder to do elsewhere,” Eric Dalski said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 19, 2010 

An article on Monday about environmentally focused start-up companies sharing green “co-working” spaces misstated the rental fee charged by Green Desk, one such venture, whose fee was compared with the cost of Green Spaces, another start-up company. While Green Spaces charges $550 for a single desk with 24-hour access, Green Desk charges $299 — not $199 — for comparable space and access.

It may be mid-winter, but one spot in the heart of New York City is hot, green and growing. That spot is Green Spaces, an eco-sensitive, non-profit-centered incubator, doing what incubators are meant to do: helping to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services.

Green Spaces was launched nearly three years ago by Minneapolis native Jennie Nevin when she left a Wall Street job for, ahem, greener pastures.

 "The idea was conceived in the winter of 2007, "said Nevin. "I had left Wall Street and was doing some independent consulting work for small, green businesses.  I was working from home in a small, New York City apartment that was lonely and cramped and I was always looking to network with other green businesses. 

"One night my roommate at the time, Amanda Miller, and I were discussing this conundrum and she thought I should start a space for green start-ups to work and hang out from. Marissa Feinberg, a partner in Green Spaces, thought of the name and we launched it."

Nevin explained that her interest in the green industry started right after college when she took a year off to take graduate environmental courses at Harvard.

"I realized that sustainability in business made a lot of sense due to limited natural resources, the principles of reduce and reuse which also make economic sense, " said Nevin. "At the time, these principles were not commonly accepted in business, so I went back for my MBA and started my career on Wall Street. In the evening, I researched green investments and in 2005 realized that this was beginning to take off. I then started a networking group called ‘Green Leaders', that's now run by Marissa [Feinberg] and includes more than 400 change agents for sustainability in NYC."

 Nevin explains the goal of Green Spaces is really to bring together leading green entrepreneurs from all industries and help them all grow stronger together. Her theory is that by coming together, sharing ideas and resources and showing the broader community their products and services, that those businesses will help accelerate an emerging green economy.

"We would like to create a hub for green entrepreneurs to work from and to connect with the broader economy in several regions across the country," said Nevin "We're currently in New York and Colorado, and our next stop will most likely be L.A.   We'd like to eventually own the buildings we occupy and use them to showcase how a building can inexpensively be retrofitted green." 

Green Spaces companies have access to interns for project work and all member companies are able to hire in-house interns at reasonable rates on a project-by-project basis depending on the needs and skills required for the project.  Green Spaces then helps showcase its companies to the public through its newsletter, its website, local and national press as well as and the networking events they host every week at each Green Spaces Hub. 

"We plan on creating a starter package for our start-up companies which will provide them with access to a broad range of services to launch their company at a low, fixed price, "said Nevin.   "We'd like the package to include how to incorporate your business, plus basic legal and accounting services, logo and marketing materials and website design.  We also plan on setting up a network of investors for introductions to member companies looking to raise capital." 

Green Spaces is also in the process of launching a Green Route in Denver that maps out the green businesses and organizations throughout the metro area, as well as resources such as CSA drop-offs, and public transportation routes. This will be available complimentary online and in print in participating organizations around the city.

Some of Green Spaces most active and thriving members are Crop-to-Cup Coffee, Sea-to-Table and Farms Reach. All have received considerable press mentions, but more importantly have made valuable connections in the community by having an official work space where they can work on growing their business.

And what about the Green Spaces space itself, is it green. "Oh yes," says Nevin. "Along with our focus on growing emerging green businesses and organizations, we do try to keep our own operations green.  We recycle, compost, have a native plant garden, use CFL light bulbs, and use all reclaimed furniture throughout our space."

Just what we'd expect.

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-Green Guide Network, January 16 2010