By Jean Clark ‘45 

This award is very special and certainly unexpected. Picking through garbage does not usually rate as an academic achievement, so I am very grateful to the Alumnae Association for including me in the ranks of the wonderful Wells women who have already received this honor.

Coming back to Wells is always a time to reminisce about our experiences here. My class, the Class of ‘45, is uniquely the World War II class. It was only three months after we arrived in Aurora that the Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor on a peaceful Sunday afternoon during a broadcast of the New York Philharmonic. I was listening to it on the fourth floor of Main. The shock and horror I felt is still one of my most vivid memories, as it must be for all of us old enough to remember that far back. And my class was among those here on campus celebrating VE-Day less than a month before we graduated. During that time we were physically isolated in Aurora by the gas shortage, trying to prepare ourselves for the post-war world while watching others make the tremendous sacrifices that enabled us to win the war. Here, our main contribution to the military effort was to make sure that no German aircraft penetrated the Wells airspace undetected. And, I am glad to report, we did not fail.

The world we graduated into was an optimistic one. Marriage and family were still the accepted goal for most women. I remember our discussing the ideal as a husband and six children - though I do not think many of us achieved it, but the war had widened the opportunities for a job or a career, with or without husband. After a short stint of teaching I settled in to work for an architect who built the new schools needed to take care of the baby boom which did indeed follow. That optimism of the fifties was fueled by the scientific advances stimulated by the war effort. After all, the atom would provide a limitless supply of clean electric power and DDT would rid the world of all the terrible insect-borne diseases like malaria. "A Better Living Through Chemistry" was one of the most often-heard advertising slogans.

Of course by the sixties we began to realize that this view of progress was seriously flawed. There were two events in particular that made a lasting impression on me and began to change the focus of my life. First was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Her command of both the English language and her revelations about the inter-connectedness of the world of nature were stunning. How startling it was to learn that DDT, the miracle brew that was supposed to be a magic cure, was actually devastating the environment and threatened to wipe out entire species. Her book was truly revolutionary. It was she, almost single-handedly, who set in motion the environmental movement which reaches around the world today. And I was one of those swept along with it.

Next came the visceral impact of that first glorious picture of earth taken from space, a picture never before seen by anyone. Our planet appeared so beautiful and so small, the atmospheric layer so thin. It brought home as nothing else could that the earth is the only home we have and one which we must share with every living creature. So it is imperative that we not destroy it. That picture was - and still is - a compelling call to action.

The first Earth Day in 1970 had started people thinking about how they could become personally involved in undoing the damage to the environment. Recycling became a sort of grassroots response, something you could do with your own hands, in your own home, right away. So when an organization I belonged to wanted to start a town-wide recycling program, I volunteered to head it up. I did not realize it would grow to an almost full-time volunteer job and last 18 years.

Within two months of that club decision we held our first Recycling Day in a town parking lot. The tools we needed to start were primitive: some wheelbarrows, volunteer muscle, and two rented roll-off containers. We collected over eight tons of material and made enough money to cover all our costs. It was an exhilarating day.

In New Jersey the goal of recycling became more than just collecting newspaper to save trees or bottles and cans to prevent littering of the landscape. It was to get rid of the mountainous garbage dumps filling our wetlands and polluting our water supply. So from the beginning we realized that, if recycling were to make a significant reduction in the amount of garbage the town disposed of, it would have to become a service provided by the town. The method we used to convince the town to undertake this extra work separated Montclair’s program from many others springing up at the time. Instead of distributing money from the sale of materials to the groups who provided the mostly woman-power necessary to run the recycling center, we re-invested our profits to make the program grow. It was not long before we had enough to buy a used garbage truck to collect newspaper. We gave it to the town along with money to cover the salary of a town employee needed to run it. The town could not turn this gift down. They were on the hook. From then on the program became a joint volunteer and town effort.

During the next eight years we added two vans complete with trailers to start a town-wide curbside collection of glass and metal containers as well as the newspaper, set up our own processing facility, and adopted an ordinance requiring residents to participate. All the town costs were covered by income from the sale of recyclables plus the savings for not disposing of them as garbage. Recycling is a business; and in making our decisions as to how to expand, we imposed the same kind of discipline a business requires.

The program became well known within and beyond New Jersey because I kept records of everything, including the tonnage of recyclables collected, the number and frequency of people participating, income from sale of materials collected, operating expenses, and garbage disposal costs avoided. (What a godsend the first Mac computer was.) Those figures demonstrated that recycling was more than a feel-good activity. We were recycling 25% of our trash in a cost-effective manner by 1981. Showing it was possible helped to convince the state to adopt a state recycling plan and tax that year, which was followed in 1987 by the country’s first mandatory recycling law.

In New Jersey, as in no other state, recycling has been institutionalized. Every municipality now provides a recycling collection system and has an ordinance designating which materials its residents must separate from their trash. For most people, recycling has become a matter of habit; and the state is very close to attaining its current goal to reduce the garbage they generate by half. It has been very rewarding to have been a small part of making that happen.

What did I learn along the way? I learned you have to have a deep belief that what you are committed to is important, because to bring about change takes a lot of time, persistence, patience, and focus. It requires becoming as knowledgeable as you can so people believe you know what you are talking about. Unfortunately for the family, for awhile there were few conversations that did not involve recycling in one way or other. I learned to be careful not to be carried away by unrealistic fantasies. Time is better spent on realistic goals. I learned that being a volunteer is sometimes very useful because your motives are not suspect - particularly important when dealing with government or business. It is also harder to get rid of you. But best of all, I learned that success is easiest when the cause you are working for has enthusiastic grass roots support already and few naysayers to argue that saving trees, saving energy or turning used products into new products is a bad idea.

Would that the big environmental challenges we face today were that simple and easy to resolve. Whether the problem is destruction of wildlife habitat, global warming, or cleaning up polluted air and water, we are increasingly aware of how complex it is and yet how urgent the need for a solution. Every day brings a new problem to our attention. We need more Rachel Carsons to provide the basic scientific research and analysis, which is absolutely essential in order to make sound environmental decisions. We need more writers to educate, inspire, and activate the public. We need more leaders who can organize and thread through the complicated legislative processes necessary to implement solutions. It is to institutions such as Wells that we look to provide these women. So it is particularly exciting to see Wells is moving to meet that challenge with the construction of the new science building and, especially for me, to see that there will be an increased emphasis on the environmental sciences. It makes me feel that I should start college all over again.

Delivered Saturday, June 3, 2000, in Phipps Auditorium, Wells College