Business

Eco-entrepreneurs Wedded to Business Model, Mission

Whether on a bicycle or skateboard, customers arriving by energy-saving transportation at Birdbath Neighborhood Green Bakery’s five locations get a special discount on their order.

“It’s designed to create an incentive for the customers. They do something good for the environment and we give them a financial award,” said Maury Rubin, 52, head baker and owner of Birdbath, whose electricity is fired by wind power.

At each of Birdbath—one each in Tribeca, The Bowery and Soho and two in the East Village—“it’s all about making decisions that are good for the Earth,” he said.

Rubin and other Eco-focused entrepreneurs, including Rhea Alexander, founder of Duchamp’s Irreverent Guiding Spirit, are sticking to their Eco-business plans, despite the seeming indifference of some American consumers to their sometimes higher-priced products. (A Duchamp’s tissue box cover made of recycled industrials from Egypt that have been compounded and polished into stone, is $150. A Birdbath blueberry-corn muffin $3.50—mere pennies to some, but a lot of money to others.)

Especially during this Recession, Americans have been less likely to go green. Between 2009 and 2010, Americans’ embrace of “going green” declined in a range of areas, from installing a low-flow shower-head to making an effort to use less water to buying a hybrid or other type of fuel-efficient car.

That trend does not faze Rubin or Alexander.

Duchamp’s Irreverent Guiding Spirit—DIGS, for short—is forging ahead with its now 2-year-old e-commerce site, said Alexander, who started the East Village-based business in 1990 and will only give her age as 40-plus. She said all of her products are made from “recyclable, sustainable, organic or re-purposed” materials, imported from developing and under-developed countries.

“It’s my favorite part of the business,” Alexander said. “By having strategic relationships with organizations that share our views and mission, they help us in-country and here locally get the word out to consumers and artisans alike.” Like Alexander, Rubin said he has tried to maintain his vision for an Eco-minded business. Beyond giving discounts to skateboarders and cyclists, he himself models alternative modes of transportation. Goods from the main kitchen are transported to the Birdbath shops by rickshaw; they are subsidiaries to City Bakery in the Flatiron District.

Rubin said he spends 20 percent more on ingredients than other, non-organic bakeries. But, he adds, “Quality is the No. 1 thing. Always that’s the most important thing … It means doing things that are good for the Earth, using energy carefully, getting our staff to use energy carefully, using raw materials—and talking about all these things with customers.”