Majora Carter kicks off UNC Earth Week festivities

Charismatic speaker Majora Carter grew up in the South Bronx and had plans to move out of her neighborhood as soon as she could with dreams of becoming an artist. 

Her plans shifted while she was living at home as a NYU student.

“The wonderful thing that changed the course of my life was being put back in my hometown when the city was building a huge waste facility on the waterfront,” said Carter, at her keynote address for Campus Earth Week at Carroll Hall on Wednesday night.

“I got involved with that fight to create a much more sustainable waste management plan."

Since then, Carter has become an urban revitalization strategist and worked to bring parks, businesses and better systems of waste management to urban neighborhoods. 

“How can we encourage folks to stay and be a part of the legacy and make it a place where people want to live? That’s our question.” Carter said.

Carter encouraged her audience to identify a problem, find a solution, obtain funds, launch a beta version, learn from it and expand it. She said most people give up after the first couple of steps.

“I think most people stop themselves short before they even try," she said. "All that I’ve really done is create a process for myself to help make sure what I was working on had legs."

Carter’s keynote address was part of UNC’s Earth Week festivities. Although Earth Day is not officially celebrated until April 22, several events have been hosted by environmental groups on campus this week.

“There’s a more concentrated focus and we see heightened activity near the two weeks around Earth Day, but we really work to raise awareness of environmental issues year round,” said Cindy Shea, UNC’s sustainability director. 

Shea said the Sustainability Office is hosting four town hall events next week to give students the opportunity to contribute ideas to UNC’s strategic sustainability plan. 

“As environmentalists, we tend to have a negative, more cynical outlook, but UNC is really doing a lot in terms of environmental issues," said Jasmine Ruddy, the environmental policy chairwoman for student government. "I would say that we’re certainly a leader in the south." 

Ruddy said the environmental committee for student government organizes composting in residence halls and helped plan the Earth Week events. The Sustainability Office has had model green offices and dorm rooms set up in the Union to show students how to create sustainable spaces. 

Ruddy said UNC received a gold rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education in fall 2014 for the first time. UNC is among the first dozen campuses in the U.S. to earn a gold rating for sustainability.

On Friday, there will be an Earth Day festival in the Bell Tower Amphitheater with live bands, food trucks and guest speakers. Student environmental organizations will talk to students about how to get involved with the sustainability movement.

“There’s a critical ‘we need to conserve,’ ‘we need to stop wasting’ tone all year, but Earth Day is a time to celebrate what we’re already doing, to celebrate nature and think about how we interact with nature and the things around us,” Ruddy said.

“That’s what I love about Earth Day.”

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