Parish school joins green fund-raising and e-waste recycling program

Warwick - St. Stephen-St. Edward School and St. Stephen’s Parish have joined with a Canadian fund raiser to generate money for the parish and school by collecting and recycling used cell phones and print cartridges in an environmentally safe way. The partnership is with ThinkGreen, a community based, environmental fund-raising program created by Greentec. The arrangement works like this: Students and parishioners gather used e-waste products such as spent print cartridges and cell phones. In return, Greentec donates money for every qualifying cartridge and cell phone collected. ThinkGreen has been responsible for the diversion of more than one million cartridges from landfills and has provided nearly $3 million in funding to its participants. Greentec also will donate one tree to either the Tree Canada Foundation or American Forests for every 12 rebated cartridges or cell phones that St. Stephen’s returns. The ThinkGreen program has been responsible for the planting of more than 19,000 trees to date, removing 3,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere. More than 300 million empty printer cartridges are generated in North America every year. “ThinkGreen has been successfully implemented in over 10,000 schools in North America and we are pleased that St. Stephen’s is now a part of our environmental family” said Tony Perrotta, president of Greentec. Based in Cambridge, Ontario, the ThinkGreen Program specializes in the collection and recycling of e-waste items. Collection boxes for used cartridges and cell phones are located in the St. Stephen parish center, school office or parish rectory at 75 Sandfordville Road, Warwick. To arrange a pick-up or for more information, contact Mary Juliano at 986-3533.