GRE Issue Essay: Please offer your opinion and grade!

[Raymond Wu]

The best way to solve environmental problems caused by consumer-generated waste is for towns and cities to impose strict limits on the amount of trash they will accept from each household.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.

 

The rapid economy development is largely boosting people’s consuming ability. It is conceivable that as the amount of consumption surges, households are likely to generate more waste than ever before. The enormous consumer-generated waste needs to be removed out of towns and cities, which may result in occupation and damage of natural lands in suburban area. Trashes like plastics and batteries are most detrimental to natural environment, although most of these trashes have been recycled.

 

The statement suggests that in order to solve the problems incurred by consumer-generated waste, the amount of trash accepted from each household should be strictly limited. However, it doesn’t take into consideration the fact that the characteristics of the waste itself is more critical than the amount of the waste. In other words, some tiny trash may cause more harm to the environment than others with large size. For example, a used battery that is disposed casually can eliminate a square meters’ land’s fertilization, while several bags of waste food that is hundreds times heavier than the battery may be digested by the natural environment. Thus, a better way to minimize the detrimental influence of consumer-generated waste is to focus on the type of the waste rather than the amount.

 

In addition, different types of household may generate different kinds of waste that are of varied amount. It will be difficult to determine the exact amount of waste accepted from each household. For example, rich households may have more consuming ability and generate more consumer waste than poor households. Whether we should impose different standards based on the income of each households is highly controversial. We are unable to determine the damage caused by each households, which is an important yardstick to decide how much trash we should accept from them.

 

For the city government, such regulations may generate large amount of excessive work that needs more labor. In order to supervise people’s compliance to the regulations, additional recorders and facilities are needed. Designated areas for each household to dispose their trash may be built which may occupy more public spaces. It is also possible that people may be required to label their trash and weigh their trash themselves. Some people may dump their trash into their neighbor’s designated areas secretly in order to dispose more trash they generate. Such behaviors may ask for additional modification of laws and regulations.

 

Although excessive consumer-generated waste is a serious problem, it seems unreasonable to place a limit on the amount of trash accepted from each household. We have had better measures such as separate the trash in terms of their recyclability. Based on the separation, what may seem more reasonable is that we impose limit on the amount of trash that are most harmful to the environment, such as un-degradable plastics accepted from each households. This may restrict people’s consumption on the products and produce less detrimental effect on the environment.