Next week the school will be sponsoring the "Go Green with Nevada Blue, a sustainable campus starts with YOU!" and undoubtedly, there will be disturbing amounts of misinformation and unchecked assumptions. The very name of the event, "a sustainable campus", already makes an assumption: Why do we need a sustainable campus?

There should be no surprise, that in order to become sustainable and achieve such a goal, the school will embrace solutions such as recycling (thus securing the Academy for the Environment a spot in everyone's hearts when the budget cut specter comes looming). The irony of such a solution is that the the very act of recycling items that do not have economic returns detrimentally hurt the environment and financially burden the school. If one cannot get money from recycling an item (such as paper, plastic etc.), then it obviously costs more money (and hence more resources from mother Earth) to recycle it then just dig it straight from the ground. Recycling, may it be from local municipalities to our own recycling department at our school, are heavily subsidized and lose large amounts of money because it is not profitable.

This is why the UNR Students for Liberty are proud to be taking part in this event, where we will be "Raising Awareness of Recycling" by proving that if one wishes to help the environment and our school, we will throw our "recyclables" right where they belong... in the trash.

I predict we will run into the following myths of recycling:

• Our Garbage Will Bury Us!
• Our Garbage Will Poison Us!
• Packaging Is The Problem!
  
• We Must Achieve Trash Independence! (or a sustainable campus!)
• We Are Squandering Irreplaceable Resources When We Don't Recycle!
• Recycling Always Protects The Environment!
• Recycling Saves Resources
• Without Forced Recycling Mandates, There Wouldn't Be Any Recycling At All!