Logical Reasoning

PT9 · S2 · Q7 Waste management companies, which collect waste

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Waste management companies, which collect waste for disposal in landfills and incineration plants, report that disposable plastics make up an ever-increasing percentage of the waste they handle.

Conclusion (it is clear that)

Attempts to decrease the amount of plastic that people throw away in the garbage are failing.

Evidence

Waste management companies report that disposable plastics make up an ever-increasing percentage of the waste they handle.

Evaluate

Since a bigger percentage of trash is now disposable plastics, it doesn't seem like our efforts to discourage putting plastic in the garbage are working. But we have to figure out some way to make a counterargument.

GIVEN THAT trash companies report a higher % of disposable plastic in the waste they manage,

HOW CAN WE SAY THAT attempts to decrease the amount of plastic people throw away are working?

It's possible, since the evidence is about a percentage, that the amount of disposable plastic in the trash has gone down, even though the percentage has gone up. If there is less non-plastic trash, then the same / lower amount of plastic trash could still end up being a higher percentage than before.

Goal

Let's try to find an answer that helps us to argue that the effort to discourage the amount of plastic people put in the trash IS working.

7.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

  1. Because plastics create harmful pollutants

    No Impact

    Whether plastics are being increasingly disposed of in landfills rather than incinerated doesn't directly address whether efforts to decrease plastic waste are failing. This change in disposal method doesn't inherently affect the amount of plastic being thrown away.

    9% picked this

  2. Although many plastics are recyclable,

    No Impact

    It seemed more or less implied by the stimulus that disposable plastic means it's not-recyclable. So this seems to be telling us what we already know. It reiterates that these trash companies are dealing with a lot of plastic that needs to be incinerated or put in a landfill.

    20% picked this

  3. People are more likely to

    Irrelevant Comparison

    This is almost in our desired direction, because save and reusing plastic containers would mean we're NOT putting them in the garbage, which is what we want to argue. But this answer has no time dimension to it. It doesn't give us a way to argue that are efforts are working to change things, because it doesn't speak to anything changing.

    10% picked this

  4. Correct

    An increasing proportion of the

    Why this is right

    Wow, so it WAS a percentage vs. amount type of game they were playing. This answer is telling us there's less non-plastic trash. That means that even if we had the same volume of plastic trash as before, it would now be a higher percentage of trash. It makes the evidence way less compelling because we can't trust that "a higher percentage of plastic trash = there's more plastic trash than before".

    Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    54% picked this

  5. While the percentage of products

    Opposite (if anything)

    Since the total amount of plastic being manufactured has remained unchanged, if anything, this answer aligns with the ideas that "efforts to reduce plastic trash have not worked". Ultimately it has no impact because it's about manufacturing, and we really care about disposal.

    7% picked this

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