A Safe Space
bluehouse is conveniently located in the old Broom Corn building
at 1407 Fleet Street, between Baltimore's Inner Harbor and Fells Point
neighborhoods (ample parking is available in the garage across the street).
We renovated our 7,000 square-foot location according to our philosophy of
earth consciousness. We like to say that we "recycled" our entire space from
its formerly abandoned state, carefully preserving many of its historic and
industrial details.
All of our products meet at least one of our criteria for environmental
friendliness and healthy living; most of them meet multiple criteria.
All of the coffee, tea, and milk-based drinks available in our cafe are organic
and Fair Trade. Our food is natural and made with fresh ingredients;
much of it is delivered fresh daily. We do not have a soda fountain, but
our canned and bottled beverages were selected for their healthy qualities
and delicious taste.
Our floor and cabinetry is fashioned from beautiful, sustainable bamboo
from EcoTimber (a company whose products we proudly represent). Seventy-five
percent of our paint is low- or zero-VOC and non-toxic (provided by
Bioshield, whose products we also represent); the remainder of the paint,
because of its darker tint, has a higher VOC content but was manufactured
in an environmentally friendly process. Many of our walls, fashioned from
vintage brick, were not painted at all, nor were our open-rafter ceilings
(although the walls and ceiling in our cafe area were sealed to comply with
Baltimore City health guidelines).
Our cafe, cash/wrap, and back-room counters are topped with recycled glass
tile, which has been sealed for health and maintenance purposes with
an environmentally friendly product.
A number of the plates and dishes we use in our cafe were reclaimed or are
fashioned from renewable materials, such as bamboo.
Ninety percent of our back-office furnishings and shelving are reclaimed,
and some of our lighting is fashioned from reclaimed materials.
All of our stationery, business cards, bags, boxes, wrapping and packing
materials, coffee cups, and napkins have been created from recycled
materials. Our plasticware is biodegradable.
We recycle our used paper, as well as the used bottles and cans from our cafe.
We offer our used coffee grounds to our customers free for use in their gardens and compost piles.
We offer our used boxes and packing materials free to our customers for their personal use.
We clean our store with environmentally friendly products.
The air in our store is continually filtered and the water we use in our
cafe is filtered (the water in our coffee is filtered twice) for your
health and enjoyment.
