Being Environmentally Conscious is Exhausting: The Green Project
by Lauren Bienvenue

The Green Project recycles building materials for sale in the Post-Apocalypse.

I started work last week at The Green Project, a non-profit deconstruction organization and salvage yard off of St. Claude in the Ninth Ward that sits in a warehouse full of what looks like rusty nails and cracked mirrors. It smells like an old attic and in the middle of the day the heat chokes you. Because of this, employees survive on freezy-pops and a slow pace. Most of the customers are regulars but from what I have found, anyone who walks in walks out with a treasure.

The staff is quintessentially anti-corporate. They are all young, conscious people, excited to do their part, some days faster than others. They’re not a bunch of tree hugging, dirt worshipers, but most of them don’t eat meat and treat recycling as a life or death matter. I found out on my first day that some of them would try and talk me into this. During lunch one girl was talking about the travesty of the existence of women’s size double zero at Abercrombie and Fitch, while the other thought an employee Coke machine did not accurately represent company morals. Another went as far as labeling the Kleenex box with “using this product destroys virgin forests.”

Since then, I have become sure of one thing: being environmentally conscious is exhausting. I like preservatives, filet mignon, and long hot showers. I use plastic products, even when it’s unnecessary, I think Whole Foods is overpriced and one day I would love to make millions of dollars at a big corporate company. Call me cynical. Call me part of the problem. I will be the first to admit it, but I like to think that I am at least conscious of it.

If someone offered me a free Hummer, I wouldn’t take it. And if my best friend wanted to poke holes in an oil refinery tomorrow, I would try to talk him out of it. That stands for something, right?

The real goal of The Green Project is to make things better. And I respect that a lot. The objective is to rescue and resell housing materials to put a dent, however small, into the earth depleting, overpriced building material industry that has spawned multi-million dollar companies like Lowe’s and Home Depot. But they also provide materials for a much lower price, at a much more convenient area in one of the most desperate times the city has faced in decades.

The Green Project began in 1994 with $2,000 by a woman who no longer works there, Linda Calvert. Since then, the organization has gone through several changes.

The photo albums of their early days picture kid’s summer programs and gardening classes for the community, which used to be Mid-City before their move in 2003. These days, it is all they can do to keep up with the intake of donations and the re-setup of their offices that were severely damaged after Katrina blew the roof off.

Since the storm, a new program has been born; Reclaim New Orleans. Instead of demolishing damaged houses, they deconstruct them, piece by piece, and rescue materials that can be cleaned and resold. In the end, the homeowner gets the same result: a clear lot. They can either save the materials for their own use or donate them to The Green Project for other’s rebuilding. On average, 40-60 percent of every house is salvageable.

The other advantages are that all the irreplaceable architectural details that cannot be found anywhere else in the world except New Orleans can be saved, and by deconstructing instead of demolishing, the city’s landfills are a little less full, especially after the strain of trying to keep up with Katrina debris.

Despite numerous feature stories by The Times-Picayune, countless city festival events and word of mouth, The Green Project still seems to be virtually unknown to the rest of the city. This is because they rarely advertise and, in my own opinion, it is hard for most people to visualize what they can do with old doors and railing legs, especially when it’s easier to buy it at Pottery Barn for quadruple the price.

And if you haven’t noticed, the greater part of New Orleans is very resistant to recycling. I feel safe assuming that many of them don’t even know what it is or how it works. Green Project employees, especially the ones not from here, find this revolting.

New Orleans doesn’t even recognize that recycling is state law in other parts of the country. After the hurricane I escaped to Seattle, Washington to finish fall semester of my senior year. I was in a record store when I finished my drink that was in a plastic bottle and asked the guy behind the counter if he had a garbage can, “yes,” he replied, “but unfortunately I don’t have a recycling bin.” You would get jumped if you said that to someone here.

The Green Project is doing good work, but they’re suffering. They are struggling to get themselves together and live out days like they did in the beginning. The problem with most non-profits is that they can’t pay their employees enough to keep them around long enough. Because of this, the majority of the staff at The Green Project is moving on in the near future to bigger and better things. Of course, there will always be more volunteers, more staff members and more donations. They, just like the rest of the city, need a little bit of love.

The Green Project is located at 2831 Marais Street, on the edge of the Bywater. They can be reached by phone at 504-945-0240, or via email at thegreenproject@bellsouth.net .

Lauren Bienvenue is a recent Loyola grad holding it down in the Crescent City.