The neighborhood that brought you solar-powered Christmas decorations now wants to take green living to the next level.
Next week, the DUMBO Improvement Distric will launch Project SEED (it stands for Smart Environmental Efforts in DUMBO), a five-part program to “be a model for the rest of the city and the world,” said the group’s Executive Director Tucker Reed.
The project actually began this week with the installation of Department of Sanitation curbside recycling bins, big blue (metal) and green (paper) canisters that will sit next to the existing trash cans on five corners.
The other four elements of the project include:
• giving out compact fluorescent bulbs, one for each household, to save energy;
• the distribution of reusable canvas bags to each of the neighborhood’s 1,300 households — an effort to reduce plastic consumption;
• the installation of 35 bike racks throughout the neighborhood, including a set at the F-train station at York Street, at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge.
“We’ll also be paying for new, energy-saving LED exit signs for all the businesses in the neighborhood,” Reed said;
• publishing a “comprehensive green guide” that will not only offer easy tips for reducing your personal carbon footprint, but also how to take bigger steps, like installing green roofs or solar power.
It’s certainly not the first time that DUMBO has been at the leafy forefront. Late last year, Reed won The Brooklyn Paper’s coveted “Green Hero of the Month” award for setting up solar-powered holiday decorations.
His latest effort is far more comprehensive — but that’s what you’d expect from the neighborhood down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass.
“DUMBO has always been on the cutting edge of urban living,” Reed said. “Over the next 10 years, urban thinking will be all about green, so we needed to be out front on that, too.”
