Governments and local authorities around the world have already banned or taxed free issue carrier bags, and there is pressure for legislation in England. They argue that cities must spend vast sums to clean up the bags and the damage caused by them, money that's better spent elsewhere. Not to mention that plastic bags are a nuisance on the environment, polluting waterways and other natural areas and killing off animals. Banning plastic bags, the activists say, will redirect funds to infrastructure and spur entrepreneurial efforts to come up with alternatives to plastic. Is this the answer?
Plastic carrier bags make up less than 1% of litter on our streets. Most litter is from snack food packaging, bottles and cans, banning or taxing plastic bags will make little or no difference to the volume of litter on our streets. However, litter is a problem of social behavior, and is not specific to any one material or product.
In 2011, 8bn plastic bags were issued in the UK and that was a 5.6% increase on 2010. The recession may have been a contributory factory with families changing their shopping behavior with smaller, more frequent shops each week. Just over a year ago a 5p charge was introduced in Wales and the amount of single-use bags has fallen significantly. Latest figures show a 70-96% reduction in the use of single-use plastic bags. Northern Ireland is set to bring in a 5p charge in 2013; Scotland had completed a consultation on a proposed charge of 5p that, if adopted, would leave England the only country without one. 1. Briefly describe the topic of the article. How/why does it fit the assignment?
The topic of the article is about how the government will try to reduce plastic bags due to the waste of them. It’s talking about how the environment is being over-crowded by plastic waste. 2. Who is the author or speaker?
You indicate that the author is someone who cares about the earth, who might say he/she is in the “GoGreen” group. She knows a lot of information about what she is talking about. Has enough pathos information to try to get audience to do something about it. Or she can be a person that works for the government just warning the people what’s to come in the future. 3. Who is the intended audience?
The intended audience is all people in American who go to retail stores. Just an inform article.
4. What is the context, or exigence?
The author gives an scientific way to show how plastic bags effects the earth in an negative impact.
The author starts off with an eye-catching sentence.
5. What is the author or speaker’s purpose? How are rhetorical appeals used to achieve this purpose?
The author purpose of this article is to inform that the government will be taxing or even taking away all plastic retail bags. But in the meantime it tries to persuade the people to recycle plastic bags instead of littering.
The United States, perhaps rather unfairly, has the reputation as being the world's biggest throwaway society, yet it is one of the few countries of the world that has a particular day set aside each year as a National Recycling Day.
It was 15 years ago, in 1997 that 15th November was first set aside as America Recycles Day, with the aim of helping Americans to become better informed about the importance of recycling and buying products made from recycled materials.
This message certainly seems to be getting home to people. Back in 1960 only around 7% of municipal solid waste was recycled in the US, whereas today more than a third is either recycled or composted. This is a five-fold increase.
Municipal solid waste, rubbish, trash or garbage, call it what you will, includes all the everyday items that we use and then throw away; in fact anything that people no longer want. The range is vast and among the list will be:
packaging material of all kinds
lawn clippings and other garden refuse
old furniture.
Rubbish will come from everywhere, including homes, schools, hospitals and businesses.
Traditionally this was all dumped into holes in the ground known as landfill or in the case of coastal areas it was often taken out to sea to be dumped, but over a period of years four things happened:
society began to generate more rubbish
the possible places for dumping it began to get filled up
it was realised that much of what was being thrown away could be used or reclaimed
we it was also realised that some items like chemical waste and even torch batteries were too harmful to simply be dumped into holes in the ground.
Concern was also raised that many items that were being dumped in the ground, such as plastics, would take many centuries to decompose.
We are talking about enormous amounts of rubbish. In 2010 Americans generated some 250 million tons of it, but at the same time they managed to recycle or compost 34.1%, which was about 85 million tons. This was obviously a considerable achievement when compared with the mere 7% that had been achieved nearly 50 years earlier.
On a personal basis it was estimated that in 2010, on average each American generated 4.43 pounds of waste each day and managed to recycle or composte1.51 pounds of it.
Recycling involves the recovery of useful materials such as glass, plastic, metal and paper. This can then be remanufactured to make new products, thus reducing the need for new raw materials.
The amount of energy saved can be considerable. In 2007 the amount of energy saved from the recycling of US municipal rubbish was the annual equivalent of:
the amount of electricity consumed in 17.8 million homes
29% of US nuclear electricity generation
7.9% of US electricity generated by fossil fuels
11% of energy supplied by US coal-fired power plants
the energy supplied by 2.7% of the crude oil imported into the US
the amount of gasoline used by almost 11 million cars.
Recycling an aluminium drink-can saves enough energy to power a television set for three hours, but recycling a ton of these cans will save energy equivalent of 36 barrels of oil or 1,655 gallons of petrol.
Americans use a lot of drink-cans but unfortunately millions of empty cans are simply thrown away. It is estimated that the number of drink cans that end up in US landfill in three months would provide enough aluminium to rebuild the entire US commercial air fleet.
Recycling also reduces emissions that affect global warming. For instance, using recycled glass consumes 40% less energy that using raw materials to make glass.
Composting involves the collection of organic material, such as food waste or garden refuse, which is then processed and used for agriculture or horticulture, thus reducing the need for artificial fertilisers.
For America Recycles Day 2011, Barack Obama pointed out to Americans their responsibility to ensure that future generations benefit from having an abundance of natural resources and a healthy planet. In order to meet this obligation, he said, it is important to consume carefully, recycle a wide variety of products and materials, and to reuse whenever possible.
This responsibility extends to everyone all over the world. We are all citizens of the planet and we all need to be aware of the need to conserve our precious resources, but every year at this time the people of the most powerful nation in the world receive an extra special reminder.
1. Briefly describe the topic of the article. How/why does it fit the assignment?
This article talks about recycling to help the environment of the world. Then it breaks down how not recycling pollutes the earth, and why the U.S. is the world’s throw-away society.
2. Who is the author or speaker?
The author is person who is concern about the earth. Again it can be a person who Is a member of the “Gogreen” group. It also can be a scientist just trying to inform us about the world and why recycling can help.
3. Who is the intended audience?
The intended audience is people who litter, or people who do not recycle.
Due to the article it is a message for the whole United States of America.
4. What is the context, orexigence?
The author starts off her article again, with an eye-catching sentence. She breaks down the information to scientific form to indicate to the audience she does know what she is talking about. She uses words like “responsible, need, involve ,we” to show its us that is letting this problem happen.
6. What is the author or speaker’s purpose? How are rhetorical appeals used to achieve this purpose?
The speakers purpose it to convince her audience to recycle and why recycling is good to the environment. Her purpose is to make us feel blame.
1. Briefly describe the topic of the article. How/why does it fit the assignment?
The topic of this picture is to inform people on how much pollution is let out by non-green factories.
To introduce the hazardous smoke that is toxic ting our air.
2. Who is the author or speaker? the speaker can be an worker from the factory who is fed up with all the pollution, or can be anybody who is concerned with pollution in that matter.
3. Who is the intended audience?
The intended audience can be the go green group, or any other organization. Or news cast.
4. What is the context, orexigence?
The picture uses not just smoke, but nasty hazardous smoke that’s going into the atmosphere to catch people’s attention.
7. What is the author or speaker’s purpose? How are rhetorical appeals used to achieve this purpose?
The speakers purpose is to inform about factories polluting the air.
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