Organization president: Support The stationery and envelopes used in all of the mailings from our national headquarters are made from recycled paper, and Support we never put anything but letters in the envelopes. ████ ███ █████████ ████ ████████ █████ ███████ ███ ████ ████ ████ ████████ █████████ █████████ ███ ██████████ ███ ████ █████ █████████ ███ ██████████ ███████████
The organization president concludes that the mailings sent from the organization's headquarters are completely recyclable. How do we know? Because the mailings include envelopes and letters—nothing else. The president says that the envelopes and the stationery for the letters are made from recycled paper. And furthermore, the envelopes sometimes have windows, but these are also made from recycled material.
There are a couple of assumptions that we can spot here. First, the president assumes that recycled paper and other "recycled material" are themselves recyclable. Second, the president has to assume that no other non-recyclable components are used to make the envelopes, such as adhesive or stickers.
Which one of the following ██ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ ████████████ █████████████ ████████ ████████
All the paper ████ ██ ███ ████████████ ███ ████████ █████ ████ ████████ ██ █████████
The argument is purely about the mailings sent from the organization's headquarters being recyclable, so (A) goes beyond the scope of the argument. Even if the rest of the organization's paper were not recycled at all, that wouldn't be an issue.
The mailings from ███ ████████████████ ████████ ████████████ ██████ ███ █████████ ████ ████ ████████
An absence of windows wouldn't make the envelopes any less recyclable, so we can tell that (B) is not necessary. The argument only addresses the issue of recyclable windows "when" the envelopes have windows, so it already accounts for the cases when they do not have windows.
The envelope windows ████ ████ ████████ ████████ ███ ███████████
The argument tells us that the envelope windows are made of recycled material. But that isn't the same as saying they're recyclable. For the argument to make sense, it must assume that the recycled material used is itself recyclable.
The envelopes and ██████████ ████ ██ ███ ████████████████ ████████ ███ ██████ █████████
The argument is just about the mailings being recyclable. Whether or not they are in fact recycled doesn't affect that claim. Even if the envelopes and stationery were always thrown straight in a landfill, they could still be recyclable.
The organization sends ████████ ████ ████ ███ ████████ █████████████
(E) is a trap answer that tries to trick us into expanding the scope of the argument. But in fact, the argument only ever discusses mailings sent from the national headquarters. In the conclusion, the argument uses the referential term "these mailings." This points back to the first sentence: mailings sent
Because the argument sticks to discussing mailings sent from the national headquarters, there's no need to assume anything about its potential other mailings. Even if the organization sent non-recyclable mailings from other locations, that wouldn't harm the argument.
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