This Prophet recently got the chance to travel to New York City, and was a little bit apprehensive about the green-ness factor of the Big Apple. For a city so notorious for its chic blacks and greys, we figured that a fairly untrendy color like green wouldn’t be too popular. We were wrong. Apparently green is the new black.
Eco consciousness is all over the place in NYC (to be referred to from now on as the Big GREEN Apple), and eco tourists should feel very comfortable there. Here’s a list of some of the top best green stuff in Manhattan:
Public Transportation: Considering how many people actually live in Manhattan and the other four boroughs of New York City, there is a relatively small carbon footprint associated with transportation in the city and it keeps getting smaller. Why, you might ask? Because NYC public transportation is going green in a big way. The buses are hybrid electric vehicles now. The subway stations are changing their lighting to energy efficient CFLs. And the subway cars themselves? They reuse the energy generated when the subways brake.
Food: Eating local has thankfully become trendy in New York, and there are tons of farmer’s markets all over the city that run as late into the winter as December. If shoppers can’t make it over to a farmer’s market, though, then supermarkets are now in the habit of labeling where produce has come from to make life easier for the locavores out there.
Eating Out: Eating out isn’t always the greenest of activities, but if you’re gonna do it – do it green. This Green Prophet recently had the pleasure of eating at Blossom, an organic gourmet vegan restaurant in Chelsea. (The stuffed portobello mushrooms with cashew-tahini sauce are highly recommended.) Another great organic vegan restaurant is Angelica Kitchen in the East Village where you can get anything from soups to salads to entrees to vegan desserts.
Recycling: Almost every apartment building has a separate area for depositing paper, plastic, aluminum and glass recycling. A lot of fast food places (if you must) do too.
In the spirit of a What-I-Did-Over-The-Summer report, please share your green impressions from your summer travels in the comments section below!
Read more about eco-traveling in Israel:: Run the City Introduces and New Type of Israeli Eco Tourism, Segway Mobil Tourism Information Points Hit Tel Aviv and Jaffa, and Carbon Neutral Car Rentals with Avis Israel
Author: Karen Chernick
Much to the disappointment of her Moroccan grandmother, Karen became a vegetarian at the age of seven because of a heartfelt respect for other forms of life. She also began her journey to understand her surroundings and her impact on the environment. She even starting an elementary school Ecology Club and an environmental newsletter in the 3rd grade. (The proceeds of the newsletter went to non-profit environmental organizations, of course.) She now studies in New York. Karen can be reached at karen (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
Manhattan is filled with very trendy people. As soon as “green” became popular, it became a thing for New Yorkers.