Jun 25, 2008 12:14 pm US/Eastern
EcoMedia To Help Columbus High Go Green
EcoMedia Pledges Support And Recycling Bins
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
One would think recycling bins are easy to come by, but for a group of local high school students it's become a big challenge.
Alejandro Gonzalez heads up the recycling program at Columbus High School in Miami. It's a grass roots project that he and his fellow classmates have dedicated a lot of time to 'getting up and running'.
"Kids will come they will take off their ties and put on organic gloves and we will go through the bins and start to separate the cans from the plastic and the trash from everything else" said Gonzalez. "It's not a little process, it is very time consuming and very dirty."
And it hasn't been easy to get others on board or to get enough bins for the campus. Right now, they only have six bins for the entire school.
Gonzalez talked about the challenges, "to get the support and the money has been the biggest obstacle."
After getting in touch with several local businesses and organizations – and getting nowhere, Alex contacted
Neighbors 4 Neighbors. Neighbors brought in our
CBS4 partners,
EcoMedia, to see if they could help bring in more bins to the school.
EcoMedia Founder and CEO, Paul Polizzotto was on hand to deliver the good news to the group.
"We'd like to try to help you expand this program, and EcoMedia and our EcoZone program are committed to helping Columbus High School, when we see projects like this, we want to be able to expand them" said Polizzotto.
For these students, the commitment to help heir school recycle is a sense of responsibility.
"It's something that has to be part of your daily life, it's almost an obligation" said Joseph Villavicencio, a student and member of the Ecology Club at Columbus.
It's a legacy they hope to continue, something that Alex's teacher, Dalila Pita can see "Alex is not going stop at Columbus, where ever he's going go, he's going to continue that motivation."
As for Alex, he's looking forward to working with EcoMedia and hopes the Ecology Club meets their goal of recycling 5,000 cans and plastic bottles a week.
"Now we have EcoMedia here and CBS so I'm excited, I'm excited."
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
