Matthew Blesso, owner of Blesso Properties, tells Metro Green Business about his ecofriendly Manhattan apartment and his initiative to provide sustainable living for Central America's severely poor.
How did you become interested in green building?
It was a number of different factors all happening around the same time. I've always been into the environment and trying to do my part. Years ago, before the green movement in building really started, I hadn't related what we were doing to the environmental impact it had. I read Cradle to Cradle and other books and realized that building put off more CO2 than anything else, both in terms of construction and operating. It was a wake-up call for me.
How do you convince your clients that going green makes sense?
I don't even view it as having to convince anybody of anything. We've seen a real change the past couple years. A number of years ago, I would go to the supermarket and take back my old plastic shopping bags and people would look at me funny. Now, if you don't bring your own bag, you feel like the outcast. To be an environmentalist used to be this sort of tree-hugger, hippie, granola-eating mentality. And now there's a social stigma for not doing it. So I don't think there's a requirement to convince people nowadays.
What will it take for developers to "green" everything they do?
I think it's a combination of legislation and demand. The building code in New York is already so stringent with so many different requirements; it has to come a little further along in terms of the green movement. One way to do that is through forcing people to do particular things, just as we have to use steel pipe and we can't use PVC. You can say that you have to use low-flush toilets, recycle water, incorporate solar panels and a certain percentage of green roof. Or it can be done by incentive—you can build more square footage if you do these things; if you're LEED certified, you get a zoning bonus.
Tell me about your most ecofriendly property.
Most likely, my apartment (684 Broadway). We installed a cistern underneath my roof deck and rerouted the drain so the water collects into the cistern and waters the plants. As for the materials, there's a lot of wood and walnut; almost all of it is sustainably harvested. I have hardly anything in the entire space that's made of plastic. We tried to use as many authentic materials as we could; ideally ones that are recycled. Sound insulation in the walls is made of recycled blue jeans. We used a lot of low-energy, fiber-optic lighting and dual-flush toilets. And then the greenery: I also view green as having a connection to nature. That's done with all of the planting, obviously, by having the garden right in the center of the apartment.
Tell me about the nonprofit organization you've started.
The focus is building low-cost, architecturally interesting, and sustainable homes for the extreme poor of Central America. We're about to launch it with a big event at my apartment on October 23. We said, "What can we do by using our influence and our expertise that goes beyond just writing a check?" Our business model has always been: let's design a great product and not necessarily by spending the most money but by exerting the most creativity and thought. This initiative is saying, "Can we build an architecturally interesting house that someone like myself would be perfectly happy to live in and do it for $15,000?" That's the mandate, and we feel we can.
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