Convent and San Francisco strive to be more eco-friendly

Laura Mogannam

Theology teacher Paul Pryor Lorentz leads espacio by talking about how to help the environment.

Laura Mogannam and Olivia Mohun

Students learned about San Francisco’s goal to become a greener city and have zero waste during espacio at today’s assembly.

Paul Pryor Lorentz, theology teacher and one of Convent’s environmental ambassadors, presented a video highlighting the management of trash in San Francisco.

“I thought it was cool how people would take time to actually sort out other people’s trash in order to better the environment,” senior April Matsumoto said. “I like how the cycle goes from random waste to things that are used for our food”

The video showed Recology, the Bay Area’s waste management company, taking our compost and repurposing it to be sold to local farmers. Recology’s mission is to reduce, reuse and recycle.

“I didn’t know a lot about the stuff they are talking about, how compost was sorted,” sophomore Caroline Phillips said,  “and I like the fact that San Francisco is a green city.

Convent High School is trying to take the steps to become more environmentally friendly within their own community, too.

“I think we do have some very concrete work to do as a community in terms of picking up after ourselves, and making our space as professional looking and clean looking as it should be,” Pryor Lorentz said.

San Francisco is tackling the ambitious task of becoming a zero waste city by 2020.

“As each city becomes zero waste, more and more cities will become zero waste,” Matsumoto said. “If that spreads, then hopefully this earth will be a lot better and cleaner.”