Self-study
Special kinds of cotton that grow fibers of green or brown have been around since the 1930s but only recently became commercially feasible when a long-fibered variety that can be spun by machine was finally bred. █████ ███ ██████ ████ ███ ██ █████ ██████████ ██████ █████ ███ ███████ ██ ██████ ███ ███ ██████████ ███████ ██ ███████ ███ ██ ████████ ███ ███ ████████████
Summary
Special cotton from green/brown fibers havae been around since 1930s. Only recently, this special cotton became commercially feasible when a long-fibered kind that can be spun by machine came about. This long-fibered kind doesn’t need to be dyed, which is why processing plants don’t need to spend money on dyeing. In addition, since the long-fibered variety doesn’t need to use dyes, plants don’t need to get rid of leftover dye from processing, which avoids some ecological damage.
Very Strongly Supported Conclusions
There’s no obvious conclusion to draw from these facts. I’d go into the answers thinking, “There are at least some advantages to the long-fibered variety of cotton from green/brown fibers over the non-long-fibered variety of that cotton.” But the correct answer could be unexpected.
11.
Which one of the following ███ ██ ████████ ████████ ████ ███ ████████
a
It is ecologically █████ ██ ███████ ████████████ ██████ ████ █████████████ ███████
We know that the long-fibered green/brown cotton doesn’t have a certain ecological risk (because it doesn’t require dyes). But this doesn’t extend to long-fibered cotton that isn’t green/brown. We don’t know about ecological risks of other kinds of long cotton.
b
Green and brown ███████ ████ ███ ██ ████ ████ ██ ████ ███ ███ ████████████ ███████
Strongly supported, because the green/brown cotton “only recently” became commercially feasible, and this happened after a variety that could be machine-spun “finally” came about. This suggests that before a machine-spun version came about, it wasn’t commercially viable.
c
Hand-spun cotton is ████ ████████████ ████ ████ ████████████ ███████
We don’t get a comparison concerning ecological damage between machine-spun vs. hand-spun cotton. All we know about ecological risk is that if you don’t have to use dyes, you avoid at least one ecological risk.
d
Short-fibered regular cottons ███ ████████████ ███████████ ████ █████████ ████████
We don’t get any comparison between short-fibered cottons and synthetic fabrics.
e
Garments made of █████ ███ █████ ███████ ███ ████ █████████ ████ ████████ ████ ██ ███████ ███████
We know that processing plants don’t need to spend on dyes for creating green/brown cotton. This doesn’t suggest that clothes from green/brown cotton are less expensive, however. There are many other costs that go into clothing; we can’t go from the lack of one specific cost with respect to the cotton to a claim about overall cost of clothing from the green/brown cotton compared to other clothing.