Still, he felt like he hadn't "given back enough," says Mr. McCormack, now 58. So in 2005, he and his wife, Nicole, quit their jobs, sold their home in Montpelier, Vt., and joined the Peace Corps. The organization sent them to Senegal, where they landed in Joal, a city of 38,000 people. The first thing Mr. McCormack noticed was the trash. "There were just heaps of garbage everywhere, piles and piles of it," he says. "The filth was unbearable." It didn't take an environmental activist long to realize what had to be done. For the first few months, he rode around on Joal's single garbage truck to learn everything he could about the current garbage-removal system-or lack thereof. Eventually, Mr. McCormack and his wife worked with city officials to launch a comprehensive waste-sorting program, as well as obtain funding to build state-of-the art compost facilities and a landfill. "We put out waste containers with stickers showing people what to put in each one," he says. The project was so successful, the couple stayed in Senegal after their Peace Corps stint ended and took a paying job to do feasibility studies for waste-separation programs in two larger cities.
Senegal RPCV Curt McCormack has No Time to Waste
THE GOOD LIFE
Second Acts
* DECEMBER 20, 2010
What do you do for an encore? Here are portraits of people who are taking new paths-and changing their lives.
[Excerpt]
Caption: Making the World a Cleaner Place: Curt McCormack, with a crew of workers, gathering garbage in Senegal. Photo: Felix Raymond Sylla
Curt McCormack: No Time to Waste
Two years in the Peace Corps would likely satisfy most people's desire to help others overseas. But Curt McCormack, a former Vermont legislator, is just getting started.
Mr. McCormack spent much of his 13 years in the Vermont House championing environmental initiatives. Among his achievements: enacting statewide waste-management laws. Later, as an environmental consultant, he lobbied for regulations aimed at limiting climate change.
Still, he felt like he hadn't "given back enough," says Mr. McCormack, now 58. So in 2005, he and his wife, Nicole, quit their jobs, sold their home in Montpelier, Vt., and joined the Peace Corps. The organization sent them to Senegal, where they landed in Joal, a city of 38,000 people. The first thing Mr. McCormack noticed was the trash.
"There were just heaps of garbage everywhere, piles and piles of it," he says. "The filth was unbearable."
It didn't take an environmental activist long to realize what had to be done. For the first few months, he rode around on Joal's single garbage truck to learn everything he could about the current garbage-removal system-or lack thereof. Eventually, Mr. McCormack and his wife worked with city officials to launch a comprehensive waste-sorting program, as well as obtain funding to build state-of-the art compost facilities and a landfill.
"We put out waste containers with stickers showing people what to put in each one," he says.
The project was so successful, the couple stayed in Senegal after their Peace Corps stint ended and took a paying job to do feasibility studies for waste-separation programs in two larger cities.
They returned to the U.S. in 2008, thinking they would stay put. But Mr. McCormack is now traveling around the world again. He is completing a contract job with the Peace Corps doing environmental and energy audits of three of the organization's headquarters in Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
At the moment, Mr. McCormack doesn't own a home or a car and is "living like a nomad," he says, between periodic trips abroad. "It's not my style to plan too far into the future," he adds. "But I know I'll be doing environmental work, living simply and trying to make as big an impact as I can."
