argument11

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1010G欢迎拍文作文互改小组 7月17日作业

TOPIC: ARGUMENT11 - The following appeared in a memo from the mayor of the town of West Egg.

"Two years ago, our consultants predicted that West Egg's landfill, which is used for garbage disposal, would be completely filled within five years. During the past two years, however, town residents have been recycling twice as much aluminum and paper as they did in previous years. Next month the amount of material recycled should further increase, since charges for garbage pickup will double. Furthermore, over ninety percent of the respondents to a recent survey said that they would do more recycling in the future. Because of our residents' strong commitment to recycling, the available space in our landfill should last for considerably longer than predicted."


In this memo, the mayor considers that the available space in our landfill should last for considerably longer than predicted. The facts that citizens in West Egg (WE) recycling stronger than before is the evidences that the mayor cites to support his assertion. But these evidences do not sustain this assertion well.

First, it is known to all that not all kinds of garbage can be recycled. Although it is the truth that citizens in WE recycled twice as much aluminum and paper as they did last year, these two kinds of garbage may just a small parts of garbage in whole. There are much garbage like plastic pockets which cannot be recycled. The only way to solve this kind of garbage is to intern them into landfills. Since missing the information that how much percentage of garbage can be recycled, the efforts that the citizens made perhaps just do little help to reduce the use of landfill.

Then, the major cites a survey, in which over ninety percent of the respondents said they would do more recycling in the future. This survey seems cogent, but due to lack of the total sample numbers and methods to collect responds, the survey is not convincing. We have reasons to suspect that if only a small quantity of citizens participated in the survey, for example just 100 people there, the validity of this survey is weak. Also, methods of collecting data should be noticed, if the surveyor just send questionnaires to people, though the results show that more than 90 percent of questionnaires are promise to improve recycling, there may still lots of questionnaires which do not come back, and it is entirely possible that the feedback questionnaires only account for only modicum of the total amount. For this reason, the survey is not convincing.

Finally, there’s no evidence indicate that WE’s consultants did not take into account the factor that citizens do more recycling in the following years when they predicted. After all, consultants are experts, they may be more visionary than most people. Maybe these consultants have predicted the increasing in recycling, and at the same time they may have predicted that citizens will produce more garbage than before. If the amount of garbage increases more quickly than recycling does, landfill would be completely filled.

To sum up, due to lack of lots of information, the major’s assertion is weak. To bolster it a report in which contains the proportion of garbage in WE is needed. With the support of this information, the major’s assertion is grounded in some extent.