FirstBank assists residents of Martín Peña Channel affected by hurricane
From left: Ángel Rodríguez and Carmen Febres, from Martín Peña Recicla; Ada Gómez, G-8 resident; Catherine Ríos, and José Rivera.
FirstBank, as part of its commitment to provide assistance to disadvantaged communities, has destined a donation to the Martín Peña Recicla organization, for the recycling of mobile phones, to provide assistance to seven families from the G8 communities at the Martín Peña Channel who suffered damages to their homes after the passage of Hurricane María.
The donation was the result of the recycling of 3,542 mobile phones last year at the FirstBank and Money Express branches, and the FirstMortgage mortgage centers.
“We have an alliance with Martín Peña Recicla, through which we donate the money raised from the recycling of mobile phones for the management and disposition of the Martín Peña Channel’s solid waste,” said Catherine Ríos, compliance and community reinvestment officer of FirstBank.
“We learned of some of the community’s most pressing needs, and we decided to help them in their recovery by allocating the help on this occasion for the purchase of beds and mattresses,” she said.
Since the launch of FirstBank’s Mobile Recycling Program in 2014, a total of 9,494 units have been collected and the bank has delivered $11,703.45 to the Martín Peña Recicla program.
“We thank FirstBank for its commitment to our organization to contribute to caring for the environment at the Martín Peña Channel, and today we recognize its gesture of directly helping some of the families in our community who lost their belongings due to the hurricane,” said Ángel Rodríguez, president of the Martín Peña Recicla organization.
Mobile phone recycling reduces gas emissions, allows the reuse of metals that can be repurposed for the manufacture of other mobile phones, and helps in the conservation of natural resources. The alliance with E-Cycling, a mobile recycling company, allows some of the equipment or its materials to be reused.
“We invite you to continue looking for your old or used mobile phones, and recycle them.. Every mobile that is recycled can be remanufactured or reconditioned, or the metals that compose them can be reused,” said José Rivera, president of E-Cycling of Puerto Rico Inc.
“In our E-Cycling laboratories we work with high security standards, so that people can feel secure that the information on their cell phones is automatically destroyed,” he added.
