DOING OUR PART TO SAVE THE PLANET!

Some people view the Harvest English Institute’s technological movement and effort to go paperless with a critical eye; however, our motives are deeply rooted in a greater cause- saving the planet!

Our CEO Jerry Docarmo was a sustainability post-graduate professor at the Eckart Institute and has always looked for ways to make sure recycling and saving the environment are a priority.

By switching to an ERP system (Enterprise Resource Planning), a School Management System called InSeconds Real-time Management in 2019, Harvest reduced over 80% of its paper use. That translates into about 1,900 pages of paper per student per year.

Harvest is now saving anywhere between 1,330,000 and 1,710,000 pages of paper per year.

That translates to about 100 trees, 3,800 gallons of oil, 100,000 gallons of water, and 2,500 pounds of carbon dioxide that are not released in the air.

Our students used to use over 700,000 pages of textbooks a year.

By switching to MyEnglishLab instead of paper-based textbooks in 2020, Harvest will save 43 trees, 950 gallons of oil, 17,500 gallons of water, and avoid adding 650 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air. These numbers are only taking into account the paper’s production, not the ink, toner, transportation, and distribution of printed matter.

How important is this for the planet?

In the last two years, Harvest has made huge progress in reducing our environmental footprint. By mid-2021, we are projected to have saved 140 trees, 4,750 gallons of oil, 117,000 gallons of water, and avoided releasing 3,150 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air.

If every one of us challenged the businesses surrounding our families and communities to be more environmentally friendly, we could make a great difference in today’s world, which needs 3 trillion more trees than it currently has to save itself.

Did you know? Some materials take a long time to decompose in the environment…

• A plastic supermarket bag – 500 years +
• Plastic in general- 1000 years +
• Aluminum cans- 80 – 200 years
• Glass bottles- 1 million years
• Styrofoam cups- 500 years +
• Disposable diapers- 550 years
• Cigarette butts- 10-12 years
• Batteries – 100 years

These are some of the places that will disappear within 50 to 100 years from now if a change isn’t made:

• The Maldives
• The Great Barrier Reef – Australia
• Venice, Italy
• Glacier National Park, Montana USA

What about the oceans?

• Over 100 million marine animals, such as turtles, sharks, and birds, die from ingesting plastic in the sea every year!
• An area the size of the UK is considered a dead zone in the ocean
• 300 million lbs. of plastic are created yearly, and 50% is for single-use.

As the Harvest English Institute takes a huge step forward to help the planet, we encourage all students, faculty, staff, and global citizens to recycle, conserve energy, and help us continue striving for a safe and clean world for our kids and grandkids.

Sources: https://www.condorferries.co.uk/marine-ocean-pollution-statistics-facts,  https://www.trip.com/blog/11-amazing-destinations-that-will-disappear-soon-due-to-climate-change/,  http://storage.neic.org/event/docs/1129/how_long_does_it_take_garbage_to_decompose.pdf ,  Research book by Prof. Jerry Docarmo for the Eckart Institute 2016.