The President’s Two Hats Are Green

Added at 5:07pm, Thursday July 9th 2009

By Shalom Toronto | www.shalomtorontonews.com/

Gary Fine wears two hats. In community life, he is the recently-elected National President of the Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University. In business, he’s President of Parkers Custom Clothing Care. In both capacities, he works to improve the environment in both Canada and Israel.

Ben-Gurion University is located in the Negev Desert. It has 18,000 students. In the Negev the sun shines more than 350 days of the year. To provide clean air and avoid pollution caused by burning fossil fuels, Gary has contributed to and helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for research to produce electricity from solar power.

The University’s Sde Boker Research Institute has the largest solar disc in the world. Scientists at the BGU Institute have made huge strides producing cost-effective electricity from solar energy. These scientists are hopeful that within five years solar energy will provide electricity for all of Israel’s needs.

Gary Fine has also helped identify donors interested in potable clean water production. Using the instruments of the science for the 21st century nanotechnology, new filters have been found at Ben-Gurion University. The filters provide the means for desalinating water faster and at a reasonable price. The water researchers at Ben-Gurion are also providing help to Canadian Provincial Governments trying to clean up algae polluted Canadian Lakes.

Wearing his Parkers hat, as President of one of the oldest dry cleaners in Canada, Gary has also helped improve the environment close to home, by introducing Solvair cleaning technology.

The Solvair Cleaning System uses biodegradable cleaning fluid to clean clothes, combined with a high-tech-drying process that uses no heat. In Solvair’s unique process, garments are dried by being gently bathed in a succession of cold rinses with pressurized liquid carbon dioxide (CO2). This CO2 is recycled from other industries and put to good use in this process, so it does not contribute to greenhouse gases.

The Solvair machine has been designed to maximize recycling while minimizing use of energy and resources. The result is an environmentally-friendly process delivering the most effective cleaning available.