NYC warms up to bicycles

News flash: moments ago a friend (with a slacker schedule, it seems) e-mailed me this picture from his iPhone in Soho. Behold, a freshly-painted bike lane on Prince Street!

I rode my Amsterdam cruiser down this same block earlier today, returning from an early breakfast meeting no less, and I don’t remember seeing this painted bike lane.

So NYC is finally getting serious about biking… To add more sauce to this riveting anecdote, just yesterday a friend asked how it was to bike around in the city, and I responded: “we need some paint on the bike lanes to make the lanes more visible to drivers”.

Sometimes in life you get what you ask for…

Note | green design conference in NYC

This looks like an interesting conference (NYC May 19)… I will try to attend and post some notes here for those of you that cannot make it.

It’s billed as: “two conversations on the greening of architecture and design and the future of sustainable materials” and being hosted by materials group Material ConneXion and trend forecaster Li Edelkoort.

I learned about the event on Dezeen (one of my favorite design blogs and probably the best-looking blog on the planet).

Auditing our green journey

Assuming you’re taking one, do you remember what sparked your green journey?

For us, it was Inconvenient Truth (summer ‘06), Manufactured Landscapes (early ‘07) and Lohas 11 (spring ‘07) - we came away determined to make a difference.

It’s been almost a year and it feels like time to take stock of our efforts. How are things going?

Well, here are some things we’re doing as part of a general effort to be more responsible citizens/consumers:

• Bike or walk to meetings (yes, even when it’s pissing with rain!)
• Use a Brita Filter instead of bottled water (our crude math tells us this saves over 100 plastic bottles a year)
• Print stuff only when absolutely necessary (hardly ever, it turns out)
• Use reusable canvas vs. plastic bags when grocery shopping
• Use natural house-cleaning and personal care products (the crystal rock deodorant hasn’t won us over yet however…)