ENVIRONMENT

In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, local ordinances do not require all businesses to recycle, and even when large companies provide space for employees to toss materials into bins, officials are unable to determine how much they recycle. In Charlotte and the county’s six towns, there is no requirement that apartments, townhouses, condos and other multifamily communities provide on-site […]

Recycling containers sit in classrooms in every Charlotte-Mecklenburg public school, and students at nearly half of them make the extra effort to dump leftover liquid from milk and juice cartons before tossing them into bins. “The recycling systems are in place in the schools,” says Laurette Hall, environmental manager for Mecklenburg County Solid Waste Services, […]

Tucked at the end of a dead-end street in an industrial area just north of uptown Charlotte, Mecklenburg’s recycling processing plant sits as a storyteller of the area’s challenges in figuring out how to reduce its dependence on landfills. KEEPING WATCH This article is part of the three-year KEEPING WATCH initiative. Learn more about the […]

Have you ever been out swimming or kayaking in the streams and lakes of North Carolina and seen turtles sunning themselves on rocks and logs? If so, then chances are that you have spotted the painted turtle at least once. The painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) is one of the most common and widespread species of […]

Shredded paper Paper is a popular recycling item so it may seem a bit puzzling that shredded paper is on the do-not-toss list for your curbside recycling bin. It’s just too small for the sorting machines used at Mecklenburg’s recycling processing facility. It can be composted, put in the recycling container at your grocery store […]

“Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen,” noted revered conservationist Aldo Leopold. The trained ecologist, on the other hand, “lives alone in world of wounds.” She takes no pleasure in evergreen thickets of Chinese privet on a dreary winter day. She cringes at patches of lush Japanese stilt grass. She […]

The LandTrust for Central North Carolina and staff from the North Carolina Museum of Sciences will host the second annual Uwharrie Naturalist Weekend on May 10 and 11, 2014. This naturalist weekend is the only one of its kind in the area and showcases the 1,300-acre Low Water Bridge Preserve on the Uwharrie River. The […]

In the Uwharries, raptors make their presence known in late winter and early spring. A lone female northern harrier has spent the winter skimming our fields of native warm season grass. I’ve come to wonder if she’s the same one who shows up every fall, who chased away another pair of harriers who tried to […]

Although bear sightings in the Piedmont are not uncommon, the bears are usually just passing through. However, black bears are gradually expanding their habitat into the Piedmont region, and their range now extends over 60 percent of North Carolina. Though historically they were found across the state, black bears had very low population numbers in […]

When my niece and nephew were younger, they had large, shallow pans to take along on trips to the Low Water Bridge. Wading and skipping rocks were favorite pastimes on this picturesque section of the Uwharrie River, but on occasion they would also pan for gold. Grandpa provided the labor, shoveling pebbles and sediment into […]