For budding green entrepreneurs, it seems to start with an idea.

An idea based on connection with something larger than oneself, where values of sourcing materials sustainably, focusing locally and keeping ethics at the forefront translate into action- action which generates a product or service that will benefit the whole in the long rather than short term and tend to be free of any ties to the larger grid of business as usual.

Despite the state of the economy, the green industry and emerging technology fields are generally on the upswing, especially in Tucson and where down-home ingenuity, creativity and independence have come together in the creation of some cottage industries focusing on such things as landscaping, spices and interior design.

Pamela Portwood with Greener Lives thinks the time is right to start a green business. Janelle Montenegro photo Advertisement

Going green outdoors

“I’ve always been interested in the healing aspects of plants and nature…my philosophy is to provide a landscape that the customer will love, while encouraging a connection with the outdoors and nature, and bringing the therapeutic value of plants and nature into their lives,” says Penny Batelli, sole proprietor of Blooming Earth, a landscape design and consulting business.

In business since 1988, Batelli says that although work has definitely slowed due to the economy, she isn’t necessarily concerned about “growing” her company beyond herself.

Her livelihood seems inspired more from a love of the land than from creating a burgeoning corporation complete with a host of employees and a burning drive to make a huge footprint on the world.

“I’ve just always had steady employment for myself, other than the first year maybe, based on word of mouth, referrals and no advertising…(believe it or not) I’m surprised at how many of my clients really don’t seem to care much for green or sustainability, but I try to educate and encourage them through the use of low water, drought tolerant, low maintenance plant materials, water harvesting and efficient irrigation design.”

Batelli is not alone when it comes to nurturing her love of green despite the market demands for something less than that which she does provide as necessary.

Going green with food

Flavorbank, a gourmet spice company now in it’s 40th year, doesn’t necessarily tout ‘organic’ as much as it is about sharing food, community and what can be obtained through ‘fair trade’ and locally whenever possible according to owner, Jennifer English, who feels sometimes the politics and label of organic overshadow the greater value of how something is used and sourced.

“I don’t believe that ‘organic’ means what we want it to mean and symbolize anymore,” English says. “James Beard, the father of American Gastronomy, said that food unites us. I believe we are united by food (rather than label of organic/not organic).”

Her company, while thriving, is growing back to the height of its success in the 1990s when revenues were in the multi-millions. Once sold exclusively in specialty stores, Flavorbank products are facing downward pressures from chain retailers. With products such as Greek garlic rub, Hawaiian sea salts, Tahitian vanilla bean, Chipotle pepper powder and Lampong black peppercorns, English says she is committed to reviving the specialty brand, “one peppercorn, one customer at a time.” Lately she has been adding products, such as Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Afrikya Foods, based on the Ethiopian-born star chef’s new book, “Soul of a New Cuisine.”

Living a greener life however, always seems to be at the forefront for these entrepreneurs no matter what they choose to make a living at.

Going green indoors

Pamela Portwood, a former journalist is another example. Used to working as a one-person firm, she has turned her writing about green and design into a successful and modest business of creating socially responsible interiors for her residential clients by creating a company called Greener Lives specializing in healthy, eco-friendly homes and lifestyles.

“Interior design is a second career for me,” Portwood says. “I spent over 15 years as a freelance writer. In 2008, I decided that the interest in green design had grown enough that this would be a good year for me to start my own business.”

She came to that decision after graduating with an associates degree in interior design at the Art Center Design College in 2005 while waiting for a good position to open up.

“Greener Lives is still becoming established. Although I’d love to see the business grow, I’m not thinking of becoming a big corporation,” says Portwood.

Now with several design interns and projects, Greener Lives expects to take in $40,000 in revenue in her first complete year in business.

Like other green entrepreneurs, Portwood notices not everyone is quick to spend time and money on entirely green products and services. But she is creative about how she works with that information through sourcing things at both small, local suppliers who provide sustainable products like couches covered in organic fabrics, reclaimed wood flooring and also by looking to big-box stores such as the Home Depot, which carries a non-toxic paint she highly recommends that still fits within the budget for those with monetary limitations.

For more information: Blooming Earth, www.bloomingearth.net or 325-7605;  Greener Lives, 548-6812;  Flavorbank, www.flavorbank.com or 747-5431

By outward appearances Tony Vaccaro’s Brooklyn Pizza is a normal, successful, pizzeria. The storefront, at 534 N. Fourth Ave., is brightly painted lime-green, orange and black. A small group of hip-looking teenagers crowds around a few chrome café tables on the sidewalk, enthusiastically eating wide slices of thin crusty pizza. It’s a Friday night and Brooklyn Pizza is packed.

Inside, behind the counter, two white-aproned guys and a woman with flour-dusted faces are tossing dough, smearing sauce and dealing pepperoni as fast as they can to keep up with incoming orders. Some of those pizzas are about to be delivered by 21-year-old Fred Bohnen in Brooklyn Pizza’s newly purchased Smart car. Acquiring the car was a weighty financial decision for Vaccaro. As were other environmentally conscious changes.

Vacaro says he did it because the timing was right and it’s the right thing to do.

“Why the car? Because I am a very efficient person — I do everything that way — and that car is about as efficient as you can get and it really makes a statement,” Vaccaro said. “The car cost $17,000 and I could have easily spent that on a TV ad where people might see it once and then forget about it. The car is advertising in itself. Businesses can be good role models and people would feel good about supporting a store that supports the environment.”

Vaccaro says he’s been looking to make environmentally conscious changes within his business for years.

Ever since he was a kid, he says he’s dreamed about solar panels, and at the age of 16 attended an energy conference at Delphi University on Long Island where he became even more infatuated after hearing a talk on photovoltaics. The obsession never receded. Because Brooklyn Pizza has enjoyed steady growth over the 12 years Vaccaro has owned it, he says he has been able to save money to invest. In addition to the Smart car, Vaccaro more recently bought a $102,000 – before rebates and incentives – photovoltaic system for solar that will reduce by roughly half Brooklyn Pizza’s reliance on the Tucson Electric Power grid. He says the system should be up and running by the end of this month. Although it would take selling a lot of pizzas to even begin to recoup a return on investment, Vaccaro says it makes sense in so many other ways to make these kinds of investments.

“My passion and enthusiasm come from having a conscience and having a lot of exposure to nature,” Vaccaro said. “I’m also a capitalist. If my business plateaus, I’ll refuse to accept it and I’ll continue to grow it. Some entrepreneurs might laugh at what I’m doing but with a $35,000 rebate from TEP and a state credit of about $10,000 it was a good investment. It’s going to be considered ignorant to not look at green investments. It needs to make economic sense and it does right now.”

The rebates Vaccaro received from installing the photovoltaic system vary depending on the type of system installed. But this is just the beginning for Vaccaro, who hopes to have Brooklyn Pizza be 100 percent solar at some point. He monitors state and federal tax laws as well as city zoning ordinances (Brooklyn Pizza is in the city’s empowerment zone and already receives tax breaks for that). While up to his ear in making pizzas, Vaccaro also has his entrepreneurial eye on the possibility of starting a wind farm and attracting donors through a website where they can donate $100 each to make it a reality.

Brooklyn Pizza Company

www.brooklynpizzacompany.com

534 N 4th Ave

Tucson, AZ 85705

(520) 622-6868

Some people have an ear for music. Others, like Kim Fox, have an ear for corn. And kale. And tomatoes. As a small-scale urban farmer/food activist, she says it’s a skill that everyone possesses; you don’t have to be a green thumbed Mozart to create luscious and flavorful organic food right in your own backyard while also providing yourself and your neighbors with what she sees as long-term food security.

Read more…link goes to Downtown Tucsonan

Published May 2007

by Mae Lee Sun

ust west of I-10, sandwiched between Congress Street, St. Mary’s Road, and Silverbell Road, sits Menlo Park—one of Tucson’s oldest neighborhoods. Mac Hudson, president of the Menlo Park Neighborhood Association (MPNA) has family who’s lived there for years, although not as long as some residents whose family history in Menlo Park spans multiple generations. Most have gone about their business, working close to Downtown, where access to services like shopping and banking were convenient. When many of those businesses closed in the 70s and 80s, including El Banco, the white building that sat on the corner of Linda Avenue and Congress Street, some residents moved out, leaving older adobe and brick bungalows and former agricultural land to fall into disrepair or be abandoned.

In 2003 however, Hudson, along with a few friends and neighbors, poked around the scrubby, vacant lots, scattered with mesquites and thought these structures could somehow regain their use. One idea they had was to transform a crumbling 1905-era double-brick home with a detached coach house at 17 North Linda Avenue into a community center and public garden. After the house was purchased by Pima County in the 1980s, it served as a residence for county employees, including Ward 1’s present City Council Member, Jose Ibarra.

Hudson says, “Myself, along with other Menlo Park residents and neighborhood association members, formed the Linda Avenue (LA) Subcommittee to talk about what we wanted to see happen with the house and the land. We knew from the beginning, having spoken with past neighborhood leaders who had saved the place from destruction in the 90s that we wanted to honor the architecture and cultural traditions of the past. But we also wanted to be forward-thinking by making Linda Avenue sustainable beyond that, creating a space the neighborhood could use and learn from.”

So, off the MPNA went, searching for ways to fund the project, managing to mobilize support from the private and public sectors. They were successful in obtaining $250,000 in county bond money granted in 2004. Some of the bond money was used to hire Richard Fe Tom of The Architecture Company to complete an architectural assessment, gearing the property toward adaptive re-use. The exterior structure of 17 N. Linda was then stabilized. Concurrently, dozens of residents, children and local Chicano artists, including those associated with Raices Taller 222 (RT222), a Latino-based art gallery, planned to paint a 60-foot mural on the west-facing masonry wall that divided the property with El Rio health clinic. The participants, including Ceci Garcia and David Tineo of RT222, had such a good time, they extended the mural to a final span of over 200 feet and gave it a colorful ending. The mural however, was only one aspect of what Joanie Sawyer, Program Associate for PRONeigborhoods, and Ann Audrey, Environmental Projects Coordinator for the City of Tucson’s Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development, say has pulled this unique neighborhood and project together.

“The mural on the Linda Avenue Project is a good example of how to have fun and proves how possible it is to accomplish something when people work together. I also saw how at the end of the day, members of the neighborhood were able to trust that they could count on one another where before, they were skeptical about what could be achieved,” says Sawyer, whose organization funded the mural through its small grants program. PRO Neighborhoods remains involved, not only because they subsequently granted the MPNA additional funding to take things to the next level, but because PRO Neighborhoods’ role, says Program Manager Judith Anderson, is to provide assistance to groups wanting to effect change in their communities by helping them build partnerships with the public and private sector, even jumping in with “peoplepower” if needed. PRO Neighborhoods has also helped other neighborhood groups achieve similar goals, including the progressive neighborhood of Dunbar Spring, where residents have modeled many of the principles of revitalization that have been integrated into the Menlo Park LA project. Aubrey then stepped in as a representative of the City to oversee the water harvesting plans and supported the MPNA’s workshop series on sustainability, which was paid for by the second PRO Neighborhoods grant.

“You can plunk in basins around trees anywhere but if you’re not looking at the land ten years down the road, you’re going to miss the real challenges that come with first doing a site assessment to see what exactly you’re dealing with,” says Audrey. “You want there to be an integrated approach that can mitigate the noise issues and transient traffic on that particular site off of Congress and I-10 as well as look at how the outdoor space can be designed so that people can gather there year-round.” Audrey’s chief role is to help neighborhoods get their environmentally-based projects off the ground. The energy and success, however, comes directly from the commitment on the part of the residents, she adds, and not from the City or outside groups, although her office has effectively assisted the mid-town neighborhood of Blenman-Elm in planting trees in the right-of-ways and the central/northwest Keeling Neighborhood in designing a green pathway or “greenway”. She expects more neighborhoods to follow in the footsteps of Menlo Park with residents turning flat, dry, urban lots into lushly landscaped and sustainable garden/community spaces. The how-to workshops were taught by Audrey and local permaculture experts Brad Lancaster and Dan Dorsey of the Sonoran Permaculture Guild, who introduced residents to sculpted trenches and basins, planting in native “guilds” with mesquite, ironwoods, blue palo verde, grey thorn and quail bush, and showed them how to integrate the existing chunks of broken concrete from the site back into the landscape design.

Although the project is hardly complete, it’s this kind of enthusiasm and community-wide effort that Richard Elias, chairman of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, feels will preserve both the quality and way-of-life for older, residential neighborhoods. “As a fifth-generation Tucsonan, I know what neighborhoods mean to the people who live there. Menlo Park is a good example of a neighborhood under extreme stress and pressure from the millions of dollars in development related to Rio Nuevo, which is right across the street from Linda Avenue. Menlo Park is also a good example of a neighborhood that has taken a stand to protect its cultural resources by turning the neglected eyesore of 17 N. Linda into an asset that will be of great benefit to everyone. We’re here to help them accomplish that.”

And if taking on the 17 N. Linda Avenue site weren’t ambitious enough, even with the assistance and support of organizations citywide, the intrepid MPNA, who throughout the project has partnered with Chicanos Por La Causa—an award-winning community development corporation that represents and serves the Hispanic community—is also discussing plans with the County to expand their vision through appropriation of the old El Banco structure next door. Its current temporary function is to house the County’s wireless radio operations, but the MPNA is in the process of developing a business plan for it called “El Banco del Artes”, a haven for arts and culture in the neighborhood. The plan also includes a “Museo de Barrio” as well as a café/gift shop to encourage the project’s long-term financial sustainability and independence from County funding. However, they’re still considering ideas, all of which would not be put into action until agreements on El Banco’s use are finalized with the County.

For more information, contact Menlo Park Neighborhood Association at 628-4927; PRONeighborhoods at 882-5885; City of Tucson Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development at 791-4545; Sonoran Permaculture Guild at 624-8030; and Chicanos Por La Causa at 882-0018.