April
2002
Home,
Sweet Home
The Satya Interview with Paul
Novak
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Paul Novak is the founder and manager of ECO (Environmental
Construction Outfitters) of New York, a building and home-improvement
supply store located in the Bronx that sells everything from natural
cleaning products to environmentally-friendly flooring. Paul told Angela
Starks about the incentives behind ECO and the types of products he
sells.
What inspired you to open the store?
Fifteen years ago, when I had already been in the construction business
for a long time, I got involved with a couple of architects who were
building environmentally-friendly homes. We were getting a great
deal
of publicity in different architectural and design magazines and
people wanted to know what products we were using. So we’d tell them,
but then they’d call back and say, “Well, we can’t find
these products, where do we buy them?” That’s when we had
the idea to put together a building supply store that sold only environmentally-friendly
products. We opened ECO in 1991.
Do you have a particular kind of customer
who comes to your store?
Our main customer is someone who wants to have a non-toxic home.
A lot of our customers have some kind of illness, whether it’s chemical
sensitivities, allergies or cancers, or else they just don’t
want to get those. Health is probably the driving locomotion behind
this
business.
What are the most toxic materials in the home
and what alternatives do you provide?
Carpeting can be one of the worst products; synthetic carpets are
full of chemicals that they continually release into the air, which
is called ‘outgassing.’ We offer natural fiber and wools without any
chemical additives or outgassing. Paints can be very toxic, as can wood
finishes and floor finishes. Even cleaning products can be extremely
toxic, right down to your dish detergent that may have certain chemicals
and oils. Our cleaning products don’t even have things like
citrus oils, because people can be sensitive to anything with an
oil.
Insulation can be extremely toxic. Fiberglass insulation is carcinogenic,
and there is a lot of formaldehyde outgassing from it. Then your glues
and adhesives are very toxic, which are used in putting a house together,
whether in cabinetry or putting tiles down.
Unfortunately a lot of people are uneducated about—or just don’t
believe in—what we’re doing, and they find out the hard way.
They may feel ill, get headaches, or worse. So we’ll get a call
from someone who has built a new home and they just can’t live
in it, it’s so toxic. They didn’t realize that all these
chemicals had been put into it.
In that case, do you provide means to reduce
the existing toxicity without having to pull the whole house down?
Trying to put things right after you’ve already built something
is not an easy solution. It’s better to do the right thing from
the start. But yes, we have sealers, specialist cleaning units, outgassing
absorbers, and things like that. For example, we have ozonation machines
that you put above a carpet and let it run for a while, to help break
up a lot of petro-chemical molecules that have been released into
the
air by the carpet. The machine is excellent for getting rid of odors,
it reduces molds and mildew, and things like that. After that, you
can
apply a carpet sealant.
If the low-toxicity alternatives are available,
such as the things that you sell, why is it that such toxic products
continue to be made at all?
Well, for one thing, they’re cheaper. The trend is going the other
way, but still a lot of builders or decorators are always pushing to
make the most money they can per square foot of a house. The type of
products we sell are generally more expensive than what you’ll
find in a regular store, but it’s not as big a difference as it
used to be. It used to be 30 or 40 percent more to build an environmentally-friendly
home and it’s definitely less than a 10 percent difference now.
A lot of prices—especially for flooring—have come down, because
it’s more competitive out there. For example, bamboo flooring just
a couple of years ago would cost $6 a square foot; now it’s
just over $4.
Are your alternatives generally as effective?
As in any category, there are good products and there’s junk. There’s
a lot of stuff out there, but we don’t sell anything unless it’s
a high quality, functional product. It’s one of the reasons we’ve
lasted for 10 years. If it doesn’t work, there’s no reason
to have it. Instead of selling a lot of different brands, we try to
sell only one in each category—the one that we consider to be
the very best.
Our main emphasis is still the construction products, but what’s
happened over the years is that our clients have appreciated our construction
products so much that they’ll ask us to find other products for
them. One reason is the trust factor—they trust the products
we recommend and they know we are diligent and do our research before
we
sell anything.
Do you offer any special services at your
store?
We do mail order across the country, and we have a consulting service.
If a company or an individual wants to build an environmentally-friendly
or low-toxic home, we can go in there and advise from beginning to
end.
Alternatively, if they are out-of-state they can just send us their
plans and we do a consulting service from that. Also, a lot of doctors
will send their chemically-sensitive clients to us and we’ll
inspect their home to see how they can detoxify it.
You must have changed a lot of people’s
lives over the years.
The gratification that comes from helping people is one of the reasons
I stuck in this business all this time. We have a great success rate
in helping people to green their homes. We had people who couldn’t
even live in their homes, or their children had gotten sick, and we
fixed it so they can live in there. We’re talking hundreds of
people over the years.
ECO of New York is located at 901 E. 134 St., Bronx, NY. Call (800)
238-5008 or visit www.environproducts.com
to learn more.
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