The recycling of municipal solid waste is widely seen as an environmentally preferable alternative to the prevailing practices of incineration...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
The recycling of municipal solid waste is widely seen as an environmentally preferable alternative to the prevailing practices of incineration and of dumping in landfills. Recycling is profitable, as the recycling programs already in operation demonstrate. A state legislator proposes that communities should therefore be required to adopt recycling and to reach the target of recycling 50 percent of all solid waste within 5 years.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously calls into question the advisability of implementing the proposal?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| The recycling of municipal solid waste is widely seen as an environmentally preferable alternative to the prevailing practices of incineration and of dumping in landfills. |
|
| Recycling is profitable, as the recycling programs already in operation demonstrate. |
|
| A state legislator proposes that communities should therefore be required to adopt recycling and to reach the target of recycling 50 percent of all solid waste within 5 years. |
|
Argument Flow:
The argument starts with environmental benefits of recycling, adds economic evidence that it's profitable, then presents a legislative proposal that logically follows from these two supporting points.
Main Conclusion:
Communities should be required to adopt recycling and reach 50% recycling of solid waste within 5 years.
Logical Structure:
The legislator's proposal is based on two key premises: recycling is environmentally better than current methods AND recycling is economically viable as shown by existing programs. The 'therefore' connects these benefits to justify the mandatory policy proposal.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Weaken - We need to find information that would make the legislator's proposal seem like a bad idea, even though recycling appears environmentally good and profitable
Precision of Claims
The proposal has specific requirements: ALL communities must adopt recycling AND reach exactly 50% recycling rate within exactly 5 years. The profit claim is based on current programs that are already operating
Strategy
Look for gaps between what we know works now versus what the proposal demands. The argument assumes that because current recycling programs are profitable and environmentally good, forcing all communities to hit 50% recycling in 5 years is advisable. We need scenarios that show this assumption is flawed - either the current success won't translate to the new requirements, or there are hidden costs/problems with the mandatory approach
This tells us about varying participation rates in voluntary programs (30-80%), but doesn't directly challenge the advisability of the mandatory proposal. Even with varied participation, we could still argue that making recycling mandatory would solve the participation problem and achieve the 50% target. This doesn't create a fundamental problem with the proposal itself.
This is the correct answer. It reveals a critical limitation of current recycling programs - they only handle 20% of solid waste, and specifically the 20% that can match processed raw materials in quality and price (meaning the easiest and most profitable materials to recycle). The proposal demands recycling 50% of ALL solid waste, which means communities would need to recycle an additional 30% consisting of materials that are presumably harder to process and less profitable. This directly undermines the argument's claim that recycling is profitable, making the mandatory proposal potentially inadvisable.
This discusses operational challenges with finding buyers due to small quantities, but this could actually support the mandatory proposal. If all communities were required to recycle, the quantities would likely increase significantly, potentially solving the pickup and transportation cost problems mentioned. This doesn't weaken the proposal.
This presents a minor environmental trade-off consideration - some recyclable materials produce less pollution when incinerated. However, this doesn't seriously challenge the overall advisability of the proposal since recycling is still presented as environmentally preferable overall, and this only affects 'some' materials.
This discusses materials that are both hard to recycle AND hard to incinerate. This doesn't really impact the proposal since these problematic materials would remain problematic under any waste management system. It doesn't specifically make the recycling proposal inadvisable compared to current practices.