7.56 million cartons of milk, 50,203 thousand rolls of cellophane tape, 944,643 reams of white copier paper. These numbers shock the senses. Coupled with pictures of pallets covered with boxes and Industrial-scale warehouses, they suggest big-time consumption. They are the predicted yearly purchases of Central Florida's school systems. Already the story has big implications for this area explaining it's front page coverage in Sunday's Orlando Sentinel local In-depth section. However, the article read more as a quaint reminder of the beginning of the school year than any in-depth look at what these numbers suggest. Certainly the peculiarity of the story makes it interesting but what exactly is the goal of the journalist compiling the numbers on school consumption? I hope the goal, in this time of global warming and massive ecological footprints, would be to report on the problems of having to produce so much stuff or perhaps recounting the efforts of industrial innovators to produce such quantities of goods in an environmentally sustainable fashion. Unfortunately, judging by the substance of the article such is not the goal.
Thinking about this article requires a kind of rereading. "Back-to-school shopping is a supersize event at Central Florida's school warehouses. When your mission is to keep about 350 public schools stocked, you deal with supplies by the case, pallet and truckload--because schools use a lot of stuff." Now certainly schools do use a lot of stuff and their mission is to keep their facilities stocked, but is this really news? I've reread this article to be pure fluff with no substantial interest to my life besides the concern I have for local news reporting.
It's about time local newspapers understood the importance of their role in the community. They are assets, not handicaps; they are our sentries, not bystanders.
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