Oliver Anderson

Period 2

Dr. Haslam

English 1010

10-28-20

Link:

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-garbage.html?pagewanted=all

The article, “The Reign of Recycling” written by John Tierney, and published by “The

New York Times” on October 3rd, 2015 is directed by the author to present the way we recycle

plastic isn’t as beneficial as you may have heard or thought it was. Tierney had been studying

this a long time. He even made an article back in 1996 stating the same subject as well as

problems. The older article Tierney had written prior to this one in 1996 contains a lot of the

same information, but also a lot more due to more research and findings. Tierney would like his

readers to understand that recycling takes up space and costs more money than you thought.

Tierney goes over his opinion why recycling isn’t helping our environment or economy. He

believes it is just a waste of time. Tierney wants people to understand that they’ve been told

wrong. People think we’re actually saving money by recycling, when in reality, we don’t.

Recycling is wasting tons of time and money when it could be used for better things. This point

is made as well as many others throughout the article, and uses logos, pathos, and ethos to make

a strong compelling article on why recycling is garbage.

The author demonstrates logos by showing what recycling can do for the environment.

Tierney just wants people to understand that it isn’t doing much good for us and could be a

whole lot more beneficial to just bury it or use it for something else. The author understands that
some good can come out of recycling and every fact he uses he agrees that it may be a little

beneficial but not worth the time and money to do so. However, a great use the author provides

us with is methane, which is a greenhouse gas. This may surprise you just as much as it surprised

me. Most people believe that getting rid of waste is saving the planet and will help the human

race continue on living. Many people don’t know that we can

actually trap the methane received by recycled goods and turn it

into electrical energy. Tierney stated “We are able to burn these

plastic substances in a very safe way releasing very few

pollutants”. Tierney also stated that the trucks and other resources

used to tear down plastic and get it available for reuse costs tons

of money and releases even more pollutants. Preventing these people from using this machinery

and reusing plastic would be far more beneficial than how we are doing it right now. Tierney

understands that recycling helps but like stated before, it helps very little to the point where

carbon released is almost the same as burning it, and using it for other things. The cost is one of

John's main reasons for this essay. His main focal point is that money is valuable and all this

recycling costs more money than it returns back. “Getting rid of one ton of waste costs

approximately $300 more than it would to just bury it,” says Tierney. Tierney points out that we

would save millions of dollars a year. We can just turn it into energy and could be used for far

more greater things than recycling it. Tierney then wanted you to ask yourself why people are

still doing it today and why political leaders are doing it today. They’re doing it because the vast

majority of society don’t know all the facts, or maybe they don’t know all the facts themselves.

A political leader's goal is to win you over and do

what the community wants. If the community

believes in recycling then the leaders are going to want to recycle, and keep the people on their

side rather than what’s best for the state/country. This is why he made this article. He wanted to

educate the public on why this isn’t an effective way to go about things, and makes very good

points on why. He does a great job at presenting the thoughts of others, as well as using strong

solid evidence to back up his claims on why recycling just isn’t worth it.

The author demonstrates pathos by appealing to others. Tierney knows that

they’ve been given information about the benefits recycling does for the environment. Many

believe it makes a great big impact on the environment and know very little about it. John

Tierney gave them information about it and showed them that although it may help that the

impact is far less than what it should be at that it is almost pointless to continue with what we are

doing. He gives the people the facts that they are looking for. The big thing Tierney does is he

tells everyone that yes this is what it’s doing you all are right but is it worth the extra millions

getting spent. Tierney said that it is benefitting us. Less carbon is being produced but it's very

minor. Knowing that it was very minor (2/10) of 1% he then told us that its barely making a

difference and could be used in so many other cases and save so much money.

The author uses ethos by being credible himself, but also getting others involved throughout the

article. You can tell the author has researched and studied this. He originally studied this way

back in 1996, and to this day you can tell that he has kept educated on this subject further,

developing his ethos. Tierney had been studying this for just about 20 years of his life. The New

York Times had even posted the article due to its credibility. Tierney is a very well known

journalist and has been at it for 30 years of his life so you can tell his writing is no joke. He was

able to develop strong information, had strong facts, and took them into depth rather than just

leaving them be. Tierney was able to explain and show his knowledge of the subject at hand.
Tierney working at this job for 30 years proves that he is a hard worker and does his research

when writing and can be deemed as a credible source. John just wants the readers to understand

that we aren’t taking the correct approach to this and need to change things to save money and

use plastic for much better resources. In case that wasn’t enough information, he even wrote

about Dr. Thomas C,.Kinnamens, professor and economist and Bucknell university who argued

his side about the recycling of some metals. Kinnamen thinks it isn’t giving enough benefit as

well which is the issue they’re facing. He isn’t saying that recycling isn’t helping the

environment, he is just trying to make a point that there are far more better things we can use the

plastic for. Now, Dr. Thomas and Tierney were both trying to get the same concept across. These

2 people are well educated on the subject and are both reliable sources. They both want to

accomplish and educate society to hopefully improve it some day.

The key in the authors writing is his ability to show ethos, pathos, and logos. Using and

providing these 3 techniques helps make your writing credible and reliable. Tierney develops

these 3 techniques all throughout his writing making this a well written, incredible article. The

author's use of logos helped provide all sorts of evidence that added to his reasoning on why

people shouldn’t recycle, but rather throw it away. He then provided many reasons on why we

should do so. Then, he was able to develop ethos throughout the article by including reliable

people, as well as using his research which he has collected over many years. The article was

written and then due to its credibility, was published in “​New York Times”​ . He had researched for

many years. Tierney wrote an article in 1996 proving he has been studying this subject for 2

decades if not longer. This shows that his information is well developed, and studied. Then

lastly, he used pathos to appeal to us people. He tried to make us understand and think about just

what we are doing to our environment. He doesn’t mean for us to feel guilty, but rather wants us
to realize and want to make a change. This is what makes the article so credible and good.

Without these 3 techniques, Tierney wouldn’t have been able to develop such a strong argument

like he did and overall it just makes it such a reliable article to read about.
 Work cited

Michael Munger (2019, August 14) For most things, recycling harms the environment

https://www.aier.org/article/for-most-things-recycling-harms-the-environment/

WAMU (2019, February 12) Does Your Recycling Actually Get Recycled Yes. Maybe. It

Depends

https://wamu.org/story/19/02/12/does-your-recycling-actually-get-recycled-yes-maybe-it-depend

s/

John Tierney (2015, October 3) The Reign of recycling

​https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-garbage.html?pagewanted=all