Making a move towards sustainability can look like Melissa Gibson’s promotion of biodegradable hemp products at HERbal Woodstock or the installation of green roofs by Hudson Valley Green Roof’s Nicholas DePalma. It can be through a community push via the composting program by Woodstock Farm Festival or the gradual shift towards reusable and efficient housing by Phoenicia Lodge’s new managers.
Hudson Valley Green Roofs
Nicholas DePalma stands at the edge of a roof lush with plant life, admiring the work of hustling honey bees. This is the first green roof he has ever installed and its sprawling succulents, their burning vivid colors and open flowers remind him that he is giving back to the Hudson Valley, in his own way.
“I’ve been a builder and a gardener and farmer for over a decade, and it’s a really good marriage of all the things that I’m interested in,” he said. “I kind of live by causes and when I found the green roof industry, I quickly noted it as a way to continue to do something beneficial and also make a living with it.”
Green roofs, roofs covered in vegetation, are more than just a talking point for your property. These living roofs, as they’re colloquially called, can increase insulation’s material’s resistance to heat flow, a crucial component to reduce r-value, the heat transfer which means lower energy consumption, reduce water runoff up to 80%, reduce carbon from the atmosphere, and provide food for pollinators.
Figuring out how much you can plant atop your home depends on how much weight your roof can support. The lightest option weighs roughly 25-30 pounds per square foot for 3-4 inches of soil for succulents like sedums and the heaviest option can weigh 78 pounds per square foot for at least 12 inches of soil to grow grasses, shrubs and trees.
A root barrier and waterproof membrane, or roof cover material, protects the roof underneath the plantings so that the infrastructure remains unharmed and leak-free. These roofs have a lifespan of up to 40 years and despite popular belief, they can be built on flat or pitched roofs.
DePalma said that if the membrane is protected with a green roof, it can double the lifespan of the underlying membrane. “It’s a big selling point for people because if they buy a home with a flat roof and they have to replace the rubber, they get 20 years. If they don’t have anything protecting it, if they put a green roof on, they can get 40 years out of it.”
He has been working towards getting state tax incentives for living roofs, because as of right now, the price of the project can be a barrier for customers. Prices can range from $40 or $60 per square foot. DePalma wants to make the roofs more affordable and has worked with customers to decrease the price per square foot.
“If something’s going to get scrapped, as far as budget’s concerned, for a project it’s usually the thing that is sustainable, not the things that are beautiful,” he said.
He said that recently he’s gotten many calls for projects from businesses that are located near freshwater wetlands, because of New York’s stormwater mitigation requirements and the ability of green roofs to absorb rainwater and reduce runoff.
“They’re kind of realizing how overwhelmed some of these ecological systems get from all of our hard surfaces,” he said.
Bread Alone
Since 2020, the locally-owned, most popular bakery in Boiceville has been climate neutral certified by the Change Climate Project. This certification means that Bread Alone funds greenhouse gas reduction that matches their own emissions and requires them to annually measure their emissions.
In the early 80s, Dan Leader and Sharon-Burns Leader were pioneers in the organic industry, baking with organic grains in 1883 before a national organic standard was established. The company branched out from their original bakery in Boiceville to Rhinebeck and Woodstock with an office in Lake Katrine. Its products can be found in local grocery stores to farmers markets in New York City.
Nels Leader, CEO of Bread Alone and son of Founder Dan Leader, states that the company was part of the first cohort of businesses that became USDA organic certified in 2002. Today, it’s one of the longest continually certified organic companies in the country.
“We believe that organic agriculture is a better choice for planet health and we also believe it’s a better choice for individual human health as consumers,” said Leader. “It starts with our commitment to organic.”
Bread Alone has also invested in offsetting carbon emissions through the Fulton County Landfill Gas to Energy plant, turning waste into energy by combusting methane.
Leader said, “We felt that we had a responsibility as a business to try to minimize our broader impact on the planet so we started being much more intentional around our climate and carbon footprint.”
In a recent complete renovation of the Boiceville site, everything in the facility was electrified and natural gas is no longer run on the site. It’s a net-zero facility and considered the first carbon neutral bakery in the U.S.
The company has roughly 600 kilowatts of company-owned solar power, 400 from the Boiceville location sourced from a solar field behind the building and 200 from their Lake Katrine location.
Achieving this transition from natural gas to electricity is no small task, and Leader recommends using funding from federal programs offered by the USDA and NYSERDA.
“Many of these programs are either not currently available or under threat because of the current administration. It is a more challenging moment for businesses that want to make these transitions because either resources that were available are no longer, or there’s more uncertainty around the ones that will continue to be available,” he said.
Leader’s next goals include electrifying kitchens at the Woodstock location and converting to renewable energy. After this, he’d like to expand the company’s use of compostable bags rather than single-use plastics for bread in grocery stores, in-store, and anywhere else they can. While single-use bags are often petroleum based, an ingredient Leader would like to steer clear from, compostable bags cost 35 cents per bag–over three times as much as single-use.
Since 2018, one percent of all bread sales have been donated to environmental non-profits.
Woodstock Farm Festival
On Wednesdays from 3 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. from June 11 to October 22, the weekly compost program at Woodstock Farm Festival is accepting compostable materials from people, free of charge. The program originally began in 2019 and because of the pandemic it didn’t take off until last year, late in the season.
“It was a very labor-intensive process, trying to get people to comply and having the compost be usable,” said Megan Reynolds, a board member of the group and one of two people on the composting subcommittee. “We were really trying to start slow this time, to just make sure that we were in a position with volunteers to produce viable compost.”
Food waste brought by well-intentioned locals can often be mixed in with non-compostable materials like seemingly compostable–but actually non-compostable plastics, compostable bags, or plastic lined takeout boxes. This adds more labor to the team for sorting.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, community composting programs divertsorganic waste from landfills which, in turn, reduces greenhouse gas emissions like methane, builds local soil health, and reduces carbon emissions.
Compost itself can restore contaminated soils and improve the structure and health of soil in a number of ways, including retaining nutrients and attracting beneficial insects.
The compost program works in partnership with the Town of Woodstock and after the farm festival collects compost from locals, it’s dropped off at the town office’s garage, where it will then be moved to the Woodstock Transfer Station.
Last season, on average, the program could collect up to three five-gallon buckets of composting material per week.
“We also want to be working with our vendors so that more of the waste, like take-out containers, et cetera, are compostable, and then it’s also just easier,” said Reynolds.
The Phoenicia Farmers Market runs a similar community composting program in which compost can be dropped off every Sunday from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. The Town of Shandaken accepts compost Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. at the Town Recycling Center.
HERbal Woodstock
Melissa Gibson’s fascination with hemp, a Cannabis sativa plant variety grown for its fibers and edibility, began when she read a book by Hana Gabrielova, linking hemp’s array of uses to the 17 sustainable development goals for people and the planet by the United Nations.
The 2030 agenda for global sustainability goals outlines an end to poverty, affordable energy, and 15 other objectives as a blueprint for the UN’s members. A 2022 report by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Global Health Institute created an outline of how hemp can contribute to the UN’s framework.
“It still has so much potential. All of that appealed to me when it came time to starting the dispensary, I knew that I wanted to be a part of building it,” Gibson said.
Hemp contains 0.3% or less of THC, distinguishing it from its more well-known cultivar, cannabis. Among some of its many uses, hemp can be made into fuel, building materials, plastic, clothing, flour and feed for livestock.
“There’s all these restrictions about growing it and other stigmatized things that have nothing to do with its ability to do the job it has to do,” she said. “I want to call it a willful misunderstanding of the fact that we’re not talking about something that gets you high. Industrial hemp is not a material that you can smoke and get high.”
Hemp can also be made into biochar, black carbon or charcoal, which the USDA says could be a potential substitute for chemical fertilizers. Through a process called phytoremediation, the plants can also remove and store soil contaminants, improving the soil solely by being planted.
Hemp is ready to harvest in three to four months, a fraction of the time it takes for trees to mature, another characteristic that benefits the 17 sustainable development goals.
Before Gibson’s business transitioned to Woodstock’s cannabis dispensary after she received her dispensary license, it functioned as Hemp & Humanity, a hemp and CBD-based shop. In her rebranding and renovating of her space she reused much of the materials from Hemp & Humanity.
She noted that while it can be a challenge for small businesses to get their hands on hemp, businesses like Patagonia and Levi’s have added it to their clothing collections.
State representatives like Michelle Hinchey have been at the forefront of industrializing hemp. Through her bill in 2022, market opportunities for hemp products expanded and in 2024, two bills defined cannabis as an agricultural crop and allowed for Cannabis Showcase Event permits.
Phoenicia Lodge
A cozy lodge prepares for the upcoming summer near the eagle statue on Route 28 near Phoenicia. Its new managers spent their time combing through vintage, chic rugs and artwork to decorate the revamped space.
Azie Shelhorse, the chief creative officer at Phoenicia Lodge, led the artful redesign. She opts for reuse and energy efficiency whenever possible and affordable.
The lodge offers 15 guest rooms in the form of suites, private cottages and single rooms. Prices range from roughly $190 per night for an inn room with a queen sized or double twin bed to $265 for a private one room cottage to $330 for a main lodge suite.
“We all have to buy things that are made in factories, and it just feels a little soulless. When we can bring some soul back into the space, I much prefer it,” Shelhorse said.
Phoenicia Lodge uses little to no harmful chemicals in their paint, eco-friendly, formaldehyde-free flooring and buys energy efficient appliances when replacements are necessary. It also added refillable amenities for things like shampoo and conditioner, locally sourced continental breakfasts for guests, biodegradable cleaners when possible and promote eco-tourism.
Eco-tourism as it’s used by the lodge is a form of nature-oriented travel that incorporates locals and their knowledge.
Shelhorse changed the lighting to LED, replaced broken windows with thicker, energy- and heat-efficient windows and bought mattresses that are Oeko-Tex certified, or free of harmful substances.
“When you’re a small business you really have to prioritize, ‘What needs to happen now?’” she said. “At one point, I had wanted to replace all the windows in general, so we would have better energy consumption there, and it just wasn’t possible.”
The lodge is currently in the process of installing rain barrels for the plants inside the lodge. In the future, if the budget allows it, Shelhorse would like to incorporate sustainable landscaping to complement the large, shading trees that aid them in their energy-efficient endeavors.
“We’re reusing a historic building. We’re not tearing it down and rebuilding. That’s something that I feel very strongly about. My previous career was rescuing vintage items and rehabbing them,” said Shelhorse.
Mia Quick is an intern and contributing reporter. You can reach her at reporting@theoverlooknews.com.