It won’t have the coolest — or cleanest — of next-door neighbors, but the trendy Whole Foods Market opening Tuesday in Gowanus hopes to be more environmentally hip than the rancid canal it’ll overlook.
The organic superstore at 3rd and 3rd in Brooklyn is shaping up to be an ecological theme park, with just about every local hipster food meme packed into one virtuous location — next to a Superfund site.
Small carbon footprint? Whole Foods of Gowanus will get 25 percent of its electricity from solar panels, and all the juice for its parking-lot lights from wind turbines.
Locally sourced goods? The frozen pizzas are from a nearby restaurant, and pretty soon you’ll be able to buy herbs grown inside the building’s own 20,000-square-foot rooftop greenhouse.
Recycled materials? Produce bins are made of cast-off wood from the Coney Island Boardwalk — remnants of Hurricane Sandy — and the façade is bricks from a demolished building in Newark.
Even the canal itself — which houses one of America’s most polluted bodies of water, Gowanus Creek — is getting a makeover. Whole Foods has constructed a picturesque, wide walkway near the sludgy water’s edge, complete with shrubbery and benches.
“There’s a lot of reasons why this site made perfect sense,” said Whole Foods spokesman Michael Sinatra. “The environmental focus in this neighborhood, because of the canal, has given us that much more reason to do what we’ve done in this location.”
It’s not the first Whole Foods to use solar power or buy local. But, Sinatra said, “There’s certainly nowhere else where all of the things we’re doing here are happening in one place. We feel this is one of the most sustainably designed retail outlets ever opened.”