PriyankaPalit7 wrote:
I did not understand the reasoning behind option C.
Option 1:
If the consumers buy plastic product that have a high rating ( 7, 8 or 9), they are choosing to buy products that have very limited scope for recycling.
Option2:
However, if they buy plastic products that have a lower rating ( 1, 2 ... 6), they are allowing at least one iteration of recycling. When most consumers take up this practice, over time there would be multiple iterations of recycling for these products by the time the products reach a rating of 8 or 9.
This could result in a significant reduction in the amount of waste that goes unrecycled.
On any day, option 2 reduces un-recyclable waste more than option 1 does. If so, how does this answer choice undermine the conclusion?
Can any of the experts please provide his insight?
To clarify, let's take one more look at the conclusion:
Quote:
Consumers can make a significant long-term reduction in the amount of waste that goes unrecycled, therefore, by refusing to purchase those products packaged in plastic containers labeled with the highest code numbers.
In other words, if consumers refuse to purchase products with high code numbers, the result will be a significant long-term reduction in unrecycled waste.
The conclusion is
not "Buying high-code packaging leads to more reduction of waste than buying low-code packaging." That's because the conclusion never mentions whether or not consumers continue to purchase products with low code numbers. Consumers do not have to purchase more low-code packaging in order to refuse high-code packaging.
So when we set out to undermine the conclusion, we should focus on the consequence of
not purchasing high-code packaging.
Quote:
(C) A plastic container almost always has a higher code number after it is recycled than it had before recycling because the recycling process causes a degradation of the quality of the plastic.
Choice (C) tells us that the content of high-code packaging is actually
recycled low-code packaging.
- This implies that when consumers choose to buy high-code packaging, they are motivating producers to recycle low-code packaging and turn that recycled plastic into high-code packaging.
- So if consumers refuse to buy high-code packaging, then there will be no demand for the recycled plastic that is used to create that packaging.
- Consequently, we could see a drop in the amount of low-code plastic that is recycled for use in higher-code packaging.
- This isn't airtight, but it does undermine the conclusion, because rather than seeing a "significant long-term reduction in the amount of waste that goes unrecycled" we might actually see an increase in the amount of waste that goes unrecycled. To be specific, we might see an increase in low-code packaging that goes straight to waste because there are fewer things that could be made and sold by recycling it instead.
This is why (C) does more to weaken the conclusion than any other choice available. It's certainly a case where the correct answer choice doesn't destroy the conclusion -- for starters, it's still true that refusing to buy high-code packaging results in less high-code packaging going to landfill. But no other answer choice comes close to undermining the conclusion, so we'll stick with (C) and move on.
Why is B incorrect? If consumers arent aware of the grade of plastic that they are purchasing then how can anything else in the argument hold true?
02 Oct 2017, 21:11
54%
(02:16)
correct 
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