PT9.S2.Q07 - Waste management companies, which collect waste for disposal in landfills...

bodell.legere-1

It's unclear to me why D assists in weakening the argument? Isn't the argument that efforts have not worked to have people recycle plastics? If so, how does it weaken the authors argument that recycling methods have improved for non-plastics? Very confused. TIA

Admin Note: Edited title. Please use the format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question."

sprsplspig

Hi! This question is super tough bc it deals with percentage/amount confusion. Here is my approach to this question

What evidence (premise) do we know? that the PERCENTAGE of plastic in waste that waste management companies handle is increasing. What does this mean? Does this mean that the total AMOUNT of plastic they handle is increasing? No, all we know is, relative to the other waste (metals, glass, etc etc) that they handle, there is now more plastic.

Ok, now they conclude that people are not recycling LESS (note that this is a claim about the AMOUNT of plastic) plastic. How does this conclusion connect to the premise? well, the argument is trying to argue that because the percentage of plastic that waste management companies deals with (assuming that if it goes to waste management, its not recycled) has increased, that the AMOUNT of plastic being thrown to these waste management companies has increased.

So the glaring flaw is that we have a premise about the percentage of plastic that's being thrown away, and the conclusion is about the total amount of plastic thats being thrown away.

We cannot conclude anything about the amount of plastic in the garbage based on knowledge of the percentage of plastic in the garbage. imagine this:

garbage A: 4 plastic and 4 glass
what percent of this garbage is plastic? 4/8, or 1/2, or 50%
how MUCH plastic in this garbage? 4

garbage B: 3 plastic and 1 glass
what percentage of this garbage is plastic? 3/4, or 75%
how MUCH plastic is in this garbage? 3

so even though garbage B has a higher PERCENTAGE (75% > 50%) of plastic, it actually has less amount of plastic (3 < 4) than garbage A.

D addresses exactly that flaw. If D were true, then the percentage of garbage that waste management handled has increased because waste management is no longer handling as much of the other things (glass, paper, metal, etc).

Hope this helps!