November 7, 2009

Recycling and using ‘green’ paper and petroleum–free inks puts the high school on an
eco–friendly path.

MARLENE QUARONI | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 09.09.08

MIAMI GARDENS | The red and gold is going green.

“We hope that our efforts to go green at (Msgr. Edward) Pace High School will spread like wildfire,” said Ana Garcia, the school’s principal, to a gym packed with 1,300 students, parents, teachers, staff and other Florida school administrators.

The Spartan Experience New School Orientation Day assembly Aug. 22 highlighted that that Pace is the first school in Florida to be recognized as “green” by Certified Green Partners, a nonprofit environmental awareness organization based in Miami, according to the group’s founder Gus Casamayor.

The school will qualify as a “green partner” by using certified paper that comes from sustainable and well-managed forests, recycling all paper waste and printing with petroleum-free, vegetable-based inks.

The best part: Pace will save about $20,000 a year by recycling.

According to Casamayor, the school’s trash fee was about $40,000 a year. Half of that trash was paper that was placed in six 92-gallon dumpsters.

Casamayor negotiated with ECO Recycling center to donate 70 recycling bins. The bins have been placed every classroom and office and next to garbage cans outside school buildings. Plastic and aluminum recycling bins also have been placed in the cafeteria and athletic facilities.

By recycling all paper, the amount of trash will be reduced, cutting the pickup cost by half while also reducing the amount of trash going to the landfill.

“Preserving our forests, using petroleum-free inks, reducing our trash while saving money – how can we go wrong?” said Garcia.

Casamayor, who has two of four sons attending Pace, is chairman and chief executive officer of AC Graphics, a Hialeah printing company originally started in Cuba in 1941 by his grandfather.

The business employs about 18 people and prints about 900,000 pounds of material a year. A few years ago, Casamayor suffered a health crisis which took him to his wife’s hometown in Ecuador. He visited a native healer and watched Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

“I learned that the printing industry is the No. 1 polluter in the world,” he said. “And it’s number three in the use of fossil fuels.”

Casamayor cleaned up his business and aims to clean up the industry. He learned the difference between recycled and certified paper, converted from petroleum to vegetable-based ink and became the first triple-certified printer in Florida.

“Green Partners is committed to eliminating the use of fossil fuels in the printing, paper production and other industries in order to secure the well-being of future generations,” said Casamayor. “We want to preserve the world’s forests and protect the environment.”

Students at Pace have formed an Awareness Club to educate to students, faculty and staff on the importance of eco-friendly consumption.

“Awareness is a good word,” said Father Paul Vuturo, Pace’s supervising principal. “It gives us a sense of responsibility in our relationship to one another and the world.”

Father Vuturo added that Pope Benedict XVI has stressed the importance of protecting the environment.

“He is known of as the ‘green pope’,” Father Vuturo said.

Emily Ruiz, a senior who is president of the Awareness Club, said that students are really excited about how their efforts will impact the environment in a positive way.

“People are unaware of what’s going on,” she said. “We need to educate them. We must act locally and think globally.”

 

Return to the Archdiocese of Miami Front Page

Advertisement

Advertisement