Miriam Murdoch and Jane Sharp MacRae represent two sides of the same coin. Passionately dedicated to the earth, each has used her talents and expertise to wring change -- Murdoch through local recycling efforts and MacRae through environmental conservation education.

   These days, their efforts combined together provide the backbone of the recycling program at Carolina Meadows.

   Murdoch is small in stature, but her recycling might at Carolina Meadows has prevented mounds of products from hitting local landfills.

   Ten years ago Murdoch and her husband, Harold, moved to Carolina Meadows, a retirement community just over the line in Chatham County with a Chapel Hill address. Curbside recycling was just beginning in Orange County and other areas of the country, and people needed instruction about why it was important.

   "During the war (World War II), there was a lot of saving -- you learned how to save things, you were conscious of waste," Murdoch said. "The chair of the recycling committee had died just before we came here. Recycling was just getting started, there were no collections for recycling except for newspapers."

   Murdoch accepted the challenge of chairing the committee and has stayed with it ever since, building the committee up to 12 members and 35 volunteers.

   "It was so hard to get people to listen," she said.

   Murdoch doesn't remember when recycling became a personal mission, but she believes it happened around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970. When she and her husband moved to North Carolina in 1979, they built a passive solar home on the Alamance-Orange County line. Active with Cooperative Extension Homemakers, Murdoch learned much about the importance of recycling.

   "I've always had strong feelings that recycling should be done," she said.

   At Carolina Meadows, people could not say no to Miriam Murdoch.

   She soon met someone else with the same passion.

   "I met Miriam long before moving to Carolina Meadows," said MacRae, who moved to the retirement community three years ago.

   The two found themselves attending the same meetings related to environmental issues.

   "The way we got in touch, though, was through letters to the editor of The Chapel Hill News," MacRae said, noting that both of them were writing letters about environmental issues. "I agreed with her in every letter to the editor I saw -- I'm sure I missed some, but I saw quite a few. Miriam is a strong environmentalist, but she's also interested in people problems. We phoned back and forth a few times."

   Recently, MacRae became chair of the Carolina Meadows Recycling Committee.

   "Miriam is the leader," MacRae said. "She knows everything going on here. She corralled 35 volunteers who aren't even recognized as members who help empty recycling bins."

   There are six apartment buildings at Carolina Meadows, each with a recycling room where the standard items -- newspapers, cans, glass and plastic -- can be taken. Volunteers take the bins of materials to the physical plant at the retirement community for pickup. A recycling room in the club center is where other items can be taken -- used batteries, coat hangers, ink cartridges, aluminum-can pull tabs for donating to Ronald McDonald House, egg cartons, phone books, aerosol cans and a "scrap exchange."

   MacRae's work has made a difference across the state. From 1960 to 1977 she was the State Environmental Committee chair for the local League of Women Voters.

   "We hassled the state considerably," MacRae said.

   Then she took a job in the State Policy Development Division under Gov. James B. Hunt.

   "They told us, 'Your ideas will not be accepted immediately, and you will not normally be given credit for them, but the state will promote them one of these days and the governor will take credit for it,' " MacRae said.

   The governor took credit for the N.C. Energy Efficiency and Alternative Energy Commission, which was an effort to educate the energy companies of North Carolina about the benefits of renewable energy. MacRae and her cohorts must have had some renewable energy of their own, because they kept at it, learning how other states recycled profitably and trying to bring local big business into the scenario.

   "We had competitions to see who could recycle the most with the winner each year receiving a Governor's Award," MacRae said. "They learned from each other -- like with metal waste. They learned how to recycle and recover the metals and saved a lot of money."

   She added that the awards generated publicity, friendly competition and learning opportunities. "They learned to recycle and make a profit," she said. "Any industry having trouble with hazardous waste could call and learn."

   In time even Ft. Bragg turned things around enough to win an award, MacRae said. "They were known as one of the biggest polluters in the United States," she said. "A lot of waste from U.S. military bases overseas was sent back to the US -- to Ft. Bragg."

   The hazardous materials in armaments were being buried in landfills.

   "I said that was not disposal -- it's temporary storage and will come back to haunt us," said MacRae, who received a degree in chemistry from Cornell University. New measures were learned to chemically neutralize the materials or alter them into useful materials, she said.

   MacRae and Murdoch are both from upstate New York. MacRae moved here in 1939.

   "I thought I was coming to the Deep South," she said. "I didn't know I was coming to a center of environmental activism."
MacRae joined the League of Women Voters in 1940. "The League was a second education," she said. "My third education was raising four children. From 1945 to 1965 I wasn't much involved with the environment until Earth Day 1970."

   Murdoch didn't see North Carolina until her honeymoon in 1950. She and Harold raised three children.

   "I've just done the little things like reading Ranger Rick to school kids," she said, speaking of a magazine published by the National Wildlife Federation to teach children stewardship of the earth. "That information is so important to spread to the little bitty ones. Jane was very into the politics."

   And she turned to her friend.

   "I remember hearing you speak at the Conservation Council of North Carolina," she said.

   Their mutual admiration is obvious.

   "Miriam was into recycling prior to coming here," Harold Murdoch said. "She thought it was worthwhile and when she thinks that . . . um-hmm."

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