Sustainable Duke

Betsy Cook was teased as a child by her siblings for always having dirty feet from her adventures outdoors. But to her, dirty feet were a badge of honor, something to be proud of. The dirt she has picked up along the way has become part of who she is and her commitment to sustaining the land for future generations.

Living in a New Zealand rainforest, Tawnee Milko and a team of volunteers never spoke the word "sustainability," but it was the way they lived. They found that having fewer possessions allowed them to forge stronger relationships and build community.

Kealy Devoy was six years old when she first took a walk in a grove of Aspen trees with the director of the local nature center. That walk began a journey of understanding nature, her peers and her values through the connectivity of these trees to the broader ecosystem.

When he was seven years old, David Martorana discovered the delicacy of life and the impact of environmental change while sitting in front of his bedroom window staring into his tank of Sea Monkeys in a small apartment in downtown Honolulu.

Before coming to Duke as a campus minister, Steve spent his early years growing up in the mountains of Brevard, N.C., where people lived in a mutual relationship of interdependence with their environment. Today, he advocates for "creation care" where people nurture the earth rather than trying to dominate it.

Paul Grantham believes in stories and their ability to convey meaning in ways that shape our values, perceptions and beliefs. He was reminded of that when he reconnected with "The Lorax," one of his favorite books as a child, and how it impressed upon him the importance of taking personal responsibility for the environment.

As a child, Heidi Winner and her friends assumed many roles: engineers, policy makers, artists, farmers and naturalists. But as her world expanded, she realized that people playing those roles in the adult world often make decisions from a narrower perspective without considering the broader impact.

Carina Barnett-Loro believes individual action to support sustainability is not enough. She says addressing the magnitude of the issues facing society today requires a collective response that drives changes in policy. "In bumper sticker terms: change your leaders, not your light bulbs."