Columnist: Making some types of products from recycled materials is probably as damaging to the environment as it wou...

NaiemWoolfork on August 11, 2021

I am not an instructor, but looking at answer E, the second half of the answer claims something that was never stated in the stimulus. It states that one phenomenon follows another, which is true, but then it says claims that the passage is trying to assert that the recycling process is the cause for a damaged environment, which is never stated. Hope that sort of made sense!

Naryan-Shukle on March 26, 2022

Hi @Clauzavalet1 @NaiemWoolfork ,

This is a thorough explanation Naiem, great job! Here is the question breakdown.

Stim: Making X out of recycled material takes as much energy as making it from un-recycled material. Therefore the recycled version is bad for the environment as it still uses energy. Hang on...this author just totally ignores the fact that the recycled material is...RECYCLED. It doesn't need to be mined or anything like that. This author is totally avoiding the environmental benefits of recycling and choosing just to focus on energy. Let's expose this guy.

(A): Not really. The author uses the word environmental in the same way every time.

(B): No, this person isn't reversing cause and effect. That would be if the author said: "recycling rates increase as energy use increases, therefore recycling causes people to use more energy."

(C): This is suggesting an unrepresentative sample, which is not the flaw here. There's no sampling going on.

(D): Yes, exactly! The author totally ignores all the environmental benefits of recycling and cherry picks their claims by only focusing on energy. At this point you should choose D and move on, but for education's sake, let's look at E.

(E): This answer implies an assumption about order, which isn't what happened here. This would look like the following: "We know that every time energy is used to recycle, pollution follows. Therefore recycling causes pollution." Not only does this really make no sense, but it's not what the author was arguing.

Your best bet for most questions really is to identify the error FIRST, come up with an anticipated answer, then go out and get it. In this case, we know the error was ignoring the obvious benefits of recycling. That should lead us straight to (D)