"Green Worker" director talks trash at ABO lunch.

Omar Friella, founder and director of the Green Worker Cooperatives, addressed the Associated Builders and Owners of Greater New York, Inc. (ABO) at its May 25 luncheon at The National Arts Club. Friella discussed the non-profit cooperative's efforts to salvage reusable materials from trash and demolition waste in New York's South Bronx, creating a neighborhood that is both environmentally and economically healthy.

Friella also discussed his vision for creating hundreds of jobs through the establishment of local environmentally-friendly manufacturing businesses.

A lifelong resident of the South Bronx, Friella grew up in the 1970s and 1980s when the area was "burning" and rife with crime.

While community activism has resurrected the area to a certain extent, the air quality in the South Bronx has caused area schoolchildren to develop asthma at six times the average rate of the country's children.

Unemployment remains high, at over 27%. And the days of New York as a manufacturing capital are over; "our biggest export product is garbage," Friella said. The disposal practices of New York's construction and demolition industries alone generate 13,500 tons of waste a year.

Green Worker Cooperatives is a South Bronx-based non-profit organization that seeks to create permanent and empowering jobs for South Bronx residents in new and exciting industries capable of reducing existing pollution levels. Although a nonprofit organization, GWC seeks to develop for-profit enterprises that can become self-sufficient worker-owned cooperatives in which all workers share in company profits.

"We are a non-profit organization, but we are looking to incubate for-profit businesses that are able to do a lot of business in the South Bronx," Friella said.

GWC's first cooperative, currently in its launch phase, is the Bronx Building Materials Reuse Center. Employing South Bronx residents exclusively, the center will serve as a retail warehouse for salvaged and surplus building materials, diverting reusable building materials from the construction and demolition waste stream and making them available to the public at a discounted price. Items such as cabinets, doors, flooring, major appliances, plumbing fixtures and sinks will be available.

According to Friella, people throughout New York are throwing building materials in the trash and these items are eventually compacted and sent to landfills. However, many of these items are still useable and often in good condition, he added.

"When I'm on the Upper West Side and I see chairs, cabinetry and any other stuff that people are throwing out, I say to myself, 'God, I wish I had a truck,'" Friella said. The Reuse Center will obtain materials in good condition from manufacturers and distributors with excess inventory and homeowners and contractors seeking to reduce their waste disposal costs. Merchandise will be sold at a discounted price.