ORLANDO, FL -- Florida Tile was presented with the inaugural "Giving Green" award by Mountain Re-Source Center during the international Coverings stone and tile trade show and convention on April 17, 2012.

Herb Miller, Executive Director of Mountain Re-Source Center, left, and Dan Marvin, Director of Quality Control for Florida Tile, with the Giving Green award presented by Mountain Re-Source Center to Florida Tile at Coverings 2012.

The award celebrates significant support in the form of product donations, such as tile, and the impact those donations are able to make in communities around the world. Mountain Re-Source Center is a non-profit corporation that matches the "under-resourced with the overstocked," matching those in need with benevolent companies that manufacture building materials, tools, supplies and related products.
For Herb Miller, Executive Director of Mountain Re-Source Center and its industry affiliate Tile Partners for Humanity, the award honors the impact of the contributions more than the quantity of material.

"Through Florida Tile's donations, our partners have built six homeless shelters and built or rebuilt at least 10 schools and 15 clinics at home and abroad," he said. "It's incredible to realize that through their generosity and understanding of the need to support community improvement they have served more than 2,100 families. We are proud to partner with them and to recognize their ongoing efforts to improve lives around the world."

Florida Tile has donated to Tile Partners for Humanity and Mountain Re-Source Center since 2004, when it provided 895 square feet of floor tile for two Habitat for Humanity homes in Atlanta, GA. Since that time, the company has donated nearly 350 loads of tile that have gone to 17 states, 37 nonprofit organizations and nine countries.

The tile serves partners both in the U.S., such as Habitat for Humanity and other community improvement organizations, as well as organizations working abroad. Mountain Re-Source Center estimates that the material has benefited at least 175 communities and has traveled to Central America and South America through MRC's nonprofit partners. A number of organizations work specifically in disaster relief, rebuilding communities after hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, flooding in Pennsylvania, and the earthquakes in Haiti. Other partners have used the tile to build schools and clinics in poverty-stricken areas in third world countries like Honduras and Guatemala.