Environmental justice nonprofit hosts MLK Day cleanup

CITY OF CHARLOTTE

Sol Nation, an environmental justice nonprofit, will gather volunteers Jan. 20 for a mass litter cleanup in Historic West End. Studies have found communities located near major sources of pollution and trash are at greater risk for illness and poor public safety outcomes.

Beatties Ford Road has a trash problem.

Sol Nation, a non-profit co-founded by native Charlottean Tiffany Fant, will host a community canvass and cleanup on Jan. 20 to beautify the area.

“Community members and business owners say we have a trash problem in the area,” she said.

The cleanup is part of the city’s Keep Charlotte Beautiful program. Volunteers will start at 9:30 a.m. with a short information session at Archive CLT before heading out to pick up trash along LaSalle, Five Points Plaza, Catherine Simmons, Hildebrand Street, Lincoln Heights, and other areas.

Fant says the area has a trash problem for several reasons – for starters, “we have a high transient population,” she said.

Fant estimates there are four public garbage receptacles from West Boulevard to I-85, and they’re not enough to keep litter from overflowing.

“One of the things that you’ll notice is that a lot of the trash cans are overflowing,” she said. “It’s not that people aren’t using them, it’s that our usage of them is probably higher than other areas because of our transient population.”

Another reason is the high volume of counter-service restaurants and convenience stores, contributing to take-out boxes, straw wrappers, cups, napkins, bags, and other disposables being tossed anywhere.

“We don’t have a lot of sit-down restaurants,” Fant said, “so people are literally taking their food on the go.”

The Beatties Ford Road Corridor is home to generations of Black Charlotteans, but public policy and development decisions since the 1960s have been detrimental to the community. Most notably, construction of the I-277 highway in the 1970s razed established, self-sufficient neighborhoods, destroyed the Black middle class and resulted in food deserts, poverty, and crime.

The North Carolina Department of Public Safety’s “Litter Facts” page says that people feel safer in neighborhoods free of trash, and that clean streets and neighborhoods “send a signal that people care about where they live and work.” In 2018, researchers found that American “neighborhoods where vacant lots were cleaned up experienced a 29 percent reduction in gun violence, 22 percent decrease in burglaries, and 30 percent drop in nuisances like noise complaints and illegal dumping,” according to a study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

When it comes to environmental justice, Fant says “those who are most affected are Black and brown communities.”

The link between increased risk of respiratory illnesses for people living within close proximity to freeways and highways has been an established fact for a long time. A 2011 study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology revealed that “proximity to roadways increases the risk of asthma in developed countries,” and a 2007 report in BioMed Central’s journal Environmental Health also reported “the health studies show elevated risk for development of asthma and reduced lung function in children who live near major highways.”

“Across the Globe, Black communities are the least likely to contribute to pollution, but are receiving the most damaging effects,” Fant said. A 2019 study published by PNAS confirms that “exposure is disproportionately caused by consumption of goods and services mainly by the non-Hispanic white majority, but disproportionately inhaled by black and Hispanic minorities. On average, non-Hispanic whites experience a “pollution advantage”: They experience 17% less air pollution exposure than is caused by their consumption. Blacks and Hispanics on average bear a “pollution burden” of 56% and 63% excess exposure, respectively, relative to the exposure caused by their consumption.”

Fant co-founded Sol Nation to address inequities the community, going back three generations, have faced in housing, gender, and education.

“It allows people to see that things are intricately connected,” she said. “Because when you look at all the red-lined communities that we’re familiar with, a lot of those communities are now (environmental justice) communities.”

The event will also involve surveying the community about their perceptions of climate justice and the local environment and issues they’re facing.

“All of this work is about care and love and understanding.”

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