Celebrating Nevada, respecting the Earth

As several thousand parade-goers celebrated Nevada Day last year, Laurel Dority was as struck by the aftermath as by the party itself.

Trash cans along the route were stuffed full of plastic and glass bottles and aluminum cans.

"I was watching it get thrown away and thinking what a crime," said the Carson Middle School math teacher. "What a shame that we waste these resources."

An adviser for the school's environmental club, the Green Team, she enlisted her students' help. They are spending the week preparing cardboard bins donated from Waste Management to distribute along the parade route Saturday.

"Most people don't recycle because they think it's going to be too much of a hassle," said Thalia Chavez, 12, who joined the Green Team in taping labels to the boxes Monday afternoon. "It will be much easier because we will have one on every block."

Students will assemble early Saturday morning to line the bins with plastic bags and place one per block on both sides of the road for 30 blocks along the parade route.

After the parade, students will collect the bins, sort the contents and turn them in to be recycled.

Proceeds will be used to buy permanent recycle receptacles for the school and to be used at other community functions.

"We can help make people realize what they're doing to the Earth," said Nathan Davis, 13, who has been in the club two years. "If we don't recycle, trash is going to be piled up everywhere."

The Green Team will have an entry in the Nevada Day parade where members will march and remind parade-goers to recycle. They will be followed by a float where younger children will be singing, "Good Planets are Hard to Find" and "This Land is Your Land."

"Anyone who can listen as children sing, 'This land is my land too,' and still throw out a glass bottle, they deserve the guilt," Dority said.

She said she involves the students in projects like this one to teach them that they have a stake in the future.

"They're going to be inheriting this planet," she said.

It's a message James Wernett, 13, who has been a member of the club all three of his middle school years, takes to heart.

"If we don't protect it now, we won't have it later," he said.