UNIVERSITI KUALA LUMPUR

BRITISH MALAYSIAN INSTITUTE

ASSIGNMENT

FUNDAMENTAL ENGLISH

(WEB 10302)

PREPARED BY:

MUHAMMAD ILI NURHAIKAL BIN HASSAN (51212117088)

LECTURER:

PN.SHARIAH BINTI A.WAHID

 THEME: SOCIAL

MAIN TOPIC: Reasons People Don’t Recycle

BY ROBERT TANGUAY

Why Don’t We Recycle More?

It always amazes me at how much effort and resources we consume obtaining resources,
destroying our environment only to bury those same, refined materials as trash. It’s easy to
foresee a future where we have to dig everything back up to re-use, expending even more
energy. At least it will create jobs, right?

This article is to discuss the reasons why people and business don’t recycle and ways we can
change that. Let’s get started.

It is Inconvenient to Recycle

Most people take the path of least resistance with their daily routine, constantly refining it to
remove the inconveniences to become more productive. This practice is so popular that
countless self help books have been written about the topic. People with enough money pay
others to for their inconveniences, including trash removal. The condo I live in only picks up
trash from a bin even though our city recycles, most apartments are the same way. Many rural
areas do not recycle have limited recycling capabilities.
When out in the public, there are only trash, if you can find them. While most can fight the urge
to litter, few will carry around a plastic bottle to find a place to recycle. If you want to collect
recyclables at your home to deposit yourself, it can start to take up quite a bit of space if you
don’t go frequently.

Solutions — Make it easy for people to recycle. Increase collection of recycling to areas that do
currently have it and make sorting less restrictive and to include more items. Have more
recycling centers and pay people for their recycling. In California, you can exchange you plastic,
glass and aluminum by the pound in the grocery store parking for a cash or store credit. It’s
saved me many a time and is great idea.

No Incentive to Recycle

What’s in it for me to recycle? For many, a lot of hard work. It costs time and money to recycle
instead of just throwing things in the trash. Without getting paid for their recycling or counting
the potential savings on trash bag usage (I take joy in counting the pennies), one must rely on
only the feel good promise that your recycling protects our environment. You pay for that that
feeling, and for a large number of people, it’s not enough.

When you are done with a plastic or glass jar with residue, you should rinse it out with your
water ($) and then store it separated in a bin which looks absolutely wonderful in your kitchen by
the way. If you don’t want it to smell or grow mold, hot water works best while rinsing ($$), and
please don’t for get to wash your hands ($).

If you are fortunate enough to have local recycling pickup, all you have to do is place your
recycling outside once a week, sometimes as separate trip with multiple bins, then bring them
all back after picking up the half bin of loose paper blown across your lawn. If you don’t have
local pickup, you are probably building quite the collection in your basement to maximize your
trip to the recycling center ($) halfway across town ($$). Once you get back, you can spend 15
minutes scrubbing the spilled liquids that paint your back seat or SUV trunk ($$), or just eat the
10 to 15% depreciation to your vehicles resale value your going green efforts rewarded you.

Solutions — Pay people for their recycling. Someone is making money off of it and it should be
shared with the people and groups spending the efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle. This
would also create a service industry for people who don’t want to go through the efforts. It could
fund charity. Raising the value of materials through and Emissions Tax would make it possible
to pay a fair amount to create incentive to recycle.
Price of Source Materials is Low

If it costs more money to to recycle a material such as paper, plastic or metal, it is not a good
financial move to pay for the incorporation of the recycled materials into new product. When
environmental damage is externalized from the balance sheets of corporations or governments,
we all pay for that profit. We also gladly use that material in our businesses and consumer
products. Kind of a catch twenty-two, isn’t it?

Recycled materials are not the highest of quality, and have to be refined. That cost is much less
than pumping or mining it out of the earth, and as long as the collection efforts are efficient, it
can use much less energy to produce bottles containing recycled plastics, metals and glass.
Because of the quality of recycled stock, it has to be mixed with fresh material to stabilize and
replenish components lost during the recycling process.

Solutions — Promote value added services such as emission reduction that will spur innovation
in polluting industries and consumer products. This will allow material prices to remain high due
to their environmental friendliness and not through means such as artificial scarcity.

REFERENCE : https://medium.com/@RobertTanguay/reasons-people-dont-recycle-
424928922d93
 PART A

INTRODUCTION

The article I found is titled “Reasons People Don’t Recycle”. Its author is Robert
Tanguay. The article was found on A Medium Corporation website and contains 3 pages.

PART B

SUMMARY OF ARTICLE

According to Robert Tanguay in "Reasons People Don’t Recycle" explains that recycling
is inconvenient and this seems to be the number one reason why people don’t recycle. Based
on the article, people with enough money pay others to for their inconveniences, including trash
removal. They don’t want to put extra effort. Some areas that do not recycle have limited
recycling capabilities. Sometimes sorting the item is very restrictive and didn’t include more
items. Regarding this, some places have no pick-up and limited recycling centers. More than
that, recycle not just throwing things in the trash, it costs time and money. Some regions pay for
just bottle recycling and some area no incentives for recycling. Lastly, misinformation about
overflowing landfills, depleted resources and climate change has convinced some people that
recycling doesn’t make a difference. They believe there is no problem. If it costs more money to
recycle a material such as paper, plastic or metal, it is not a good financial move to pay for the
incorporation of the recycled materials into new product. The author also explains the solution
for all the reasons that people don’t recycle.
 PART C

DISCUSSION OF THE ARTICLE CONTENT:

i) Comments on the target audiences, purpose of the article, evaluate the

ideas expressed in the article

The author wants the people around to realize the importance of recycling. The
average Malaysian throws away 1.64kg of waste per day. According to a World Bank
report, this is 0.44kg of additional waste that is produced by the average worldwide
city dweller at 1.2kg.Yes, we Malaysians throw away and waste more than normal.
At this rate, the waste production of Malaysians would increase by a drastic 65%
from 10,000 tons per day in 2010 to 17,000 tons per day by 2020. With pressing
environmental issues, pollution and global warming, it is no wonder why the talk
about green living has picked up. The purpose of the article is to give awareness to
the people to help the environment, conserve energy, reduce pollution, slow global
warming and lower waste products in landfills. By recycling, people can have
something to do with the earth's overall health and keep the air, water and land
clean. Through recycling, fewer materials are placed in the landfills, and there is
more room in the landfills for non-biodegradable garbage materials. So the ideas
expressed in the article are that people can use 3Rs. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
Recycling is the fourth and last attempt to keep material out of the dump by sending
the material to a recycling center to keep the waste out of the trash dump.
ii) Discuss the main contribution of the article, the strengths and
usefulness of the article as a whole

The authors want tell about the problem people nowadays and the solution why
people don’t like to recycle. Recycling is one of the best ways for you to have a
positive impact on the world in which we live. Recycling is important to both the
natural environment and us. We must act fast as the amount of waste we create is
increasing all the time. The phrase ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ is taught to children all
over the world in the hope of creating a clean environment. We all know that
recycling is a simple way in which every person can contribute to making a better
world. By utilizing waste products in a constructive way, we can slowly decrease the
size of our landfills. While you may feel that recycling is each person for him, in
reality it is a huge industry within itself. Moreover, the usefulness of the article is to
gives awareness about hygiene and awareness about recycling.

iii) Discuss the general usefulness or importance of the article to you as a

reader

Recycling is very important as waste has a very negative impact on the natural
environment. Harmful chemicals and greenhouse gasses are released from rubbish
in landfill sites and with recycling helps to reduce the pollution caused by waste.
Moreover, Habitat destruction and global warming are some the effects caused by
deforestation. Recycling reduces the need for raw materials so that the rainforests
can be preserved. Not just that, a huge amount of energy is used when making
products from raw materials. Besides, recycling requires much less energy and helps
to preserve natural resources. Recycling is essential to cities around the world and to
the people living in them.

iv) Comments on the author’s writing style

 The authors started his article with the condition of the environment around and
some information to readers about the people behavior nowadays. Therefore, this
can attract the readers for those that do not know detail about what happen to the
environment now and before. The vocabulary level of all these articles is not
complicated. The word is easy to understand for all readers. But the authors may
have some error spelling and repeat the same word two times.

PART D

CONCLUSION OF THE ARTICLE REVIEW ASSIGNMENT

From this assignment, what can I conclude is, firstly is about finding article and been
given some main topic and after discuss with group members we choose social topic. We have
to search an article about social and compare with group members. Secondly, introduce the
article with some aspect like author, title of article and page number. After that, we have to
summarizing article that we choose and learn. Read carefully and highlight all point. Then, make
one perfect summary which include all the points together and put it in one paragraph. After
summarizing the article each group, we must decide the best article to do discussion like
comments on the target audience, purpose of the articles and evaluate the ideas expressed in
the article. Last but not least, we can improve our writing style from aspect vocabulary, sentence
structure and summarizing the content on article. We also learn about bombastic word and the
arrangement of content