Muriel Williman never thought she would make her living in garbage. But for more than a decade, that’s what she has been doing.

“Even when I was in college, I was the person that would have to leave the room for people to even throw anything away,” said Williman, the education and outreach coordinator for the Orange County Solid Waste Management Department.

“I was composting in my apartment. I was sorting recyclables before it got trendy. Environmental consciousness was ingrained in me from a very young age.”

Williman said she learned many of her conservation habits from her mother.

“When I was a kid I used to walk in the woods with my mom, and she would talk about being mindful of our impact on the environment,” she said. “That’s what I try to convey to people today.”

Williman majored in environmental studies at a state university in New York, but after graduation she couldn’t find a job in the field.

She decided to search for jobs in Raleigh near her mother.

“I would definitely give my mom a lot of credit for my personality today,” Williman said. “I learned to compost at her knee.”

After teaching about animals for local museums, Williman became the school recycling coordinator for the nonprofit organization that operated Durham’s recycling.

“They had the number one curbside recycling program in the state, so that’s how I really got into recycling,” Williman said. “I literally visited every fourth-grade class in Durham to promote collection.”

Williman became recycling coordinator for Chatham County in 1998, her first full-time position in local government.

“I had officially arrived in garbage,” Williman said. “Now I can talk trash with the best of them.”

Then, in 2001, Williman got her current position in the area, which she called “a recycler’s paradise.”

Williman said she always wanted to integrate her passion for social justice with environmentalism, and her job allows her to do that.

Solid Waste Management Director Gayle Wilson said Williman’s passion for recycling helped establish the county’s program as one of the top statewide.

“She is a permanent fixture at all the community events in the county,” he said. “To many people she is the face of the solid waste department.”

Recycling Programs Manager Cody Marshall said Williman’s position is crucial to the success of the county’s recycling programs.

“Recycling is a whole different animal from plain garbage,” Marshall said. “It’s constantly evolving, so it’s not always easy to get the message across, whether it’s about new materials we’re collecting or methods of sorting.”

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