Eric Wallace, one of nine brothers, grew up in Wilkinsburg, delivered daily newspapers before and after school, attended Central Catholic High School and won a swimming scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh. But after attending Pitt for a year, he and his wife packed up a station wagon and drove to Colorado. There he completed college, started his own accounting firm and developed a passion for the environment. He returned to Pittsburgh in 1992, joined accounting firm Carbis Walker, where he specializes in construction and real estate issues, and later acquired interests in other ventures including a firm that wants to build ethanol plants in Pennsylvania. Mr. Wallace, who aims for a paperless office and eschews bottled water, was sworn in last month as president of the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs.

Q: Why did you return to Pittsburgh after building a life in Colorado?

A: We just didn't stay fully entertained out in Colorado. My career wasn't challenging enough, and I was very worried about the kids getting a proper education. We had to come back here.

Q: How did you become such an avowed environmentalist?

A: How does one say I want to be green in life? It started in Colorado a long time ago. Now everybody recycles. Yet I see people pick up my recycling and throw it in with the trash. You think, "I'm doing what society thinks they want to do. But what else can I do?" I avoid elevators. I avoid escalators. Not because I'm afraid of them but because I'm not using the energy. I park on the second level [of my office complex] and walk up five flights. I do that every day.

Q: You tout your office as "paperless." Is that really possible for an accountant?

A: We went paperless, I think, about three years ago. It's not really paperless; it's less paper. When you bring something in like your business card, I scan it in. And we take everybody's papers and we scan them in and ask people to send us papers electronically. We each have two or three computer screens so we can look at all the information without accumulating, copying and pushing paper. It took us a while to get organized, but less paper has been very good to us. We're seeing other industries pick it up.

Q: I see you are holding a bottle of water. How does that fit in with your environmental practices?

A: I bought this bottle of water a while ago and I've refilled it many times. I saw a statistic that said you could refill a bottle for 10 years and not reach the cost of what you paid for that bottle. In our office, we put a filter on our water system so we're not paying for bottled water. As president of the PICPA, I issued one of those executive orders: For all the continuing education classes we conduct, which is thousands, no bottled water. You take out water in pitchers and make that available to people. Everybody's starting to get it now. I think a year ago it would have been a rebellion, but everybody is becoming more aware of the nongreen effect [of bottled water]. We don't buy bottled water at home.

Q: So it's not that big of a stretch for an accountant to be a partner in a company that's developing ethanol plants?

A: That company is Consus Ethanol/Sunnyside Ethanol. Consus was the Roman god of corn and harvest. We have a project in Curwensville, Clearfield County, where we have permits and are working on getting financing; but when you're talking about $400 million, it's not an easy process. The state government is behind it and has been very supportive. It is a very green environmental process. We will use 35 million bushels of corn a year to produce 100 million gallons of ethanol. We have about 50 friends and family as investors and a $125,000 state grant. We also are working on a site in Aliquippa, Beaver County, a former mill site, where we're trying to get the funding and permits in place.

Q: What about your other major holding, Fort Pitt Group?

A: We formed that by buying some HVAC [heating, ventilation, air-conditioning] companies that were already in business in Baltimore, Md.; Columbus, Ohio; and the District of Columbia. They employ about 700 people. I am one of four owners who are all based in Pittsburgh.

Q: What are your goals as president of the PICPA?

A: I didn't set out to be president of anything. I'd like to be president of my household, but I think I'm vice president. But I'm not a person who is going to be complacent and just go to meetings. I want to take action. One thing is, I would love for a CPA to contact and participate in every high school in this state to tell them about the CPA industry and what it can mean for students. That ties in with wNo. 2, which is I want to increase the diversity in the CPA profession. That is the minority participation. We're really going to follow this thing through. We hired a group that put on presentations at about 40 high schools ... to tell kids about money in kind of a show. If I call every high school in the state and say I'm with PICPA and I want to visit, I'll get a click. Are they going to assemble all the kids for a boring talk? No. It won't be done in a year. It's a program I'm starting and hopefully, the following presidents of PICPA will follow up on it.

Q: Speaking of boring, that's what many observers believe to be the dominant trait of accountants.

A: That's interesting. The number of accounting students in graduate and Ph.D. programs was declining, and you know what turned it around? Enron. You would think it would have made it worse. But people think: "Wow. It's really cool to be an accountant. You can look into fraud investigations." Having a CPA and accounting background is a tremendous thing because it is the language of our economy, and if you can speak the language, the more power you have to take care of your own financials and your family's. So we're finding the image is not a problem. It's something that's very good.

Q: You have seven children ages 10 to 32. Have any of them followed in your footsteps and pursued accounting?

A: My oldest daughter has been in and out of the Navy. My No. 2 daughter is an attorney. My No. 3, my only son, has his MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. My No. 4 is studying accounting at Duquesne University. I still have more hope in the 15-, 12- and 10-year-olds. And I have one granddaughter who is a year and a half.

Q: What do you do that's not related to your various jobs?.....

A: Exercise, golf, gardening and children. And I have a nice Scotch collection. I have over 200 bottles in my house. What's great about Scotch is you can open up a bottle, and two years later go back and have another drink. It's not like wine where you have to get rid of it. I'm taking a trip to Scotland to visit the Glenlivet distillery.