ABSTRACT
Recycling is often discussed as an individual effort, impactful in mitigating waste only when it is officially mandated in policy and collectively embraced as a way of living. Identifying moments of discontinuity between everyday lived practices of (not) recycling and idealized discourses of sustainable living at a large event on a U.S. mountain west university campus, we use critical engagement to celebrate the diverse, often conflicting, voices that constitute both. We argue it is important to preserve the nuances of both types of rhetorics in our analyses so that we can better understand how complexity functions across both vernacular sense-making and official policy. Using rhetorical field methods, we gathered various rhetorics of recycling from the planning stage through the post-event coverage of a large-scale concert event, focusing on the diverse voices and messaging about recycling that emerged in various forms. In our analysis, we demonstrate how a relational approach to rhetoric and discourse can reflect multiple voices and various incongruities of meaning-making that invite us to (re)consider the univocal ideal of sustainability as complex and layered in its understandings and effects.
