Business Center to Emphasize the Environment as the Bottom Line : Recycling: The cluster, only the second of its kind in the nation, nurtures tenants who want to link Mother Nature and human nature.

Trash can be a wonderful thing.

Ask Yvette Berke, president of Adapt Consulting, who considers garbage a vast vein of useful material waiting to be mined. Detergent bottles shouldn’t be tossed in a landfill--they should be recycled into fast-food restaurant trays or video cassettes, she believes. And she says used plastic and cotton should be turned into T-shirts, not discarded.

Next week, Berke will bring her philosophy and her firm to Thousand Oaks, as the city opens an unusual center designed to nurture new, environmentally oriented businesses.

The Thousand Oaks Environmental Business Cluster, the second of its kind in the country, will offer tenants low-rent office space in an old GTE building on Lombard Street, high-speed data transmission lines for their computers, access to an on-line environmental library, and perhaps most important, access to each other’s ideas.

The point is both to encourage businesses that help, not harm, the environment and spur economic development in the area.

“We have people who have ideas for businesses, and maybe have even started businesses, but need a helping hand,” said City Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, who as mayor, began exploring the idea of the cluster in 1993.

The nation’s first environmental cluster opened last summer in San Jose and is now the site of about 25 businesses. Some tenants work to clean up hazardous waste. One designs environmentally oriented software; one makes a machine-cleaning substance out of kelp to replace commonly used toxic cleaners.

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A third center is scheduled to open later this year near San Diego.

Besides Adapt, the Thousand Oaks cluster’s first tenants include a company that markets environmentally friendly products to hotels, one that specializes in nontoxic cleaners for computers and other electronic equipment, and another that turns recycled plastic into planting pots.

No one person came up with the idea. Zeanah first contacted Karen A. Livesay, now the cluster’s acting director, about creating an entrepreneur center. They met with Steve Wright, a special projects manager with GTE who had researched business “incubators”--centers that house and provide assistance to start-up companies.

They in turn met with Robbins, who helped them formulate ideas for working with environmental firms.

“I knew it was a revolutionary idea, and I could tell that Karen and Steve had that vision,” Zeanah said. “And I felt it was just right for Thousand Oaks.”

Both GTE and the city of Thousand Oaks became sponsors for the project, joined by Southern California Edison, AT&T;, Rockwell and other companies.

The center they have created has room for 15 to 20 companies: small companies, that is. About 31 cubicles, left over from the old Thousand Oaks City Hall, occupy two floors. Each desk is wired for phones and computers--the wiring was installed free by a local electrician.

If the furnishings seem modest, so does the rent. Wright said one 225-square-foot space with a window leased for $230 a month. That’s about $1 a square foot, far below market rates.

Once the cluster reaches 80% occupancy, the rent should pay the center’s operating costs, Wright said.

Achieving that occupancy rate, however, will take time. The cluster’s organizers do not accept just any company in search of cheap space. Rather, they screen businesses that have submitted an application form and a basic business plan.

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To qualify, a company must be within its first few years of operation, offer some product or service benefiting the environment, show the potential to create jobs in the area and demonstrate a need for the cluster’s services.

Those that make the cut will not become permanent residents. Companies can stay a maximum of two years before they must leave and make room for the next start-up.

During their stay, the entrepreneurs will be encouraged to network over the cubicle walls, sharing ideas and possibly contacts, Livesay said.

Two tenants have already started. For about a year, Berke has been collaborating with Green Suites International, which also plans to move into the cluster next week. Green Suites, currently based in Century City, markets products--such as nontoxic cleaners and low-flow shower heads and toilets--to hotels interested in being environmentally conscious.

Representatives of the two companies recently traveled to Hawaii to make contacts in that state’s hotel industry.

Ray Burger, Green Suites’ executive vice president of sales and marketing, said he is looking forward to working with his other new neighbors.

“I think the synergy will be excellent,” he said. “It’s always nice to be exposed to new ideas.”

The company, established in 1993, has already built a client base including the Hotel Triton in San Francisco, Bally’s in Las Vegas and several Radisson hotels. Three or four employees will work at the Thousand Oaks cluster, Burger said.

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Burger has high hopes for the cluster’s teleconferencing equipment. His job currently requires frequent travel to meet with clients, something teleconferencing could change.

“I envision the day when we’ll have to do a little less traveling, and I think the technology in the cluster will aid that,” he said.

Although the cluster is first and foremost devoted to business, Livesay places great emphasis on its environmental bent. Environmentally oriented business, she said, has the potential to better the world, at a profit.

“When it comes down to it, all we’re talking about is . . . the future of the world,” she said.