GRE写作Argument模拟题10:the West Egg landfill

In his memo, the mayor relies upon a range of evidence, including a survey and recycling statistics, to prove that the West Egg landfill will remain unfilled for longer than expected. Unfortunately for West Egg, the mayor's logic involves several faulty assumptions that fail to persuade. The mayor argues, first of all, that residents have been recycling twice as much aluminum and paper for the past two years, which apparently the consultants did not take into consideration. This fact is hardly strong evidence that the overall garbage production rate has lowered—after all, what proportion of landfill volume does the aluminum and paper occupy? It may well be that other sources of garbage, i.e. glass and plastic, supply the bulk of the landfill mass, and in that event, an increase in aluminum and paper recycling may do little to lower West Egg's garbage production. Thus, for the argument to be valid, aluminum waste and paper waste comprise a significant proportion of landfill mass, such that more aluminum and paper recycling has actual benefits for space conservation. We also do not know how much the residents recycled to begin with. A doubling of a small reduction will still only bring a small reduction, and not reduce landfill waste. The overall consumption of West Egg's residents may have increased in the past two years, and a reduction in a single type of waste may not compensate for this increase. The mayor should provide statistics proving that overall consumption in West Egg is not rising. Next, the mayor's assumption that an increase in garbage pickup fees will increase recycling levels and thus reduce landfill mass is ill-founded. It is equally possible that people will simply pay more to have their garbage picked up, or delivers their garbage to the dump personally. The cash-back incentives of recycling that already exist are considered fairly ineffectual; why should the inverse measure, an added expense in garbage pickup, be any different? The mayor should provide the results of garbage fee increase programs that have been implemented in other cities, before concluding that they will be effective in compelling residents to recycle. And finally, the mayor cites a survey in which over ninety-percent of the town respondents promise to do more recycling in the future. We must question how comprehensive and representative the survey was—it may have been taken of the mayor's ten closest friends, for example, and thus would not indicate a true committment to recyling on the part of the town as a whole. Even if we accept this piece of evidence, it is hardly compelling: we must ask how much more recycling the residents will do? Will it be enough to reduce landfill mass significantly? Most critically, how can we be certain that a promise made in a survey of this type can be trusted? The mayor should clearly find some reliable and conclusive statistics to augment the survey has provided regarding the residents' commitment to increasing their recycling practices. Without this evidence, his argument remains baseless, leaving so many questions unanswered that it is scarcely persuasive.