Passage Excerpt from “The World Has an E-Waste Problem”
Excerpt from “The World Has an E-Waste Problem”
by Alana Semuels
As a tech-hungry nation . . . gets ready to upgrade to the next generation of lightning-fast 5G devices, there is a surprising environmental cost to be reckoned with: a fresh mountain of obsolete1 gadgets. About 6 million pounds of discarded electronics are already processed monthly at recycling giant ERI’s Fresno plant. Pallets2 of once beloved but now outdated devices . . . arrive here daily. Workers with hammers hack at the bulkiest devices, while others remove dangerous components like lithium-ion batteries. The scene is like a twisted . . . movie, with doomed gadgets riding an unrelenting conveyor belt into a machine that shreds them into piles of copper, aluminum and steel.
“In our society, we always have to have the new, best product,” said Aaron Blum, the co-founder and chief operating officer of ERI, on a tour of the facility. Americans spent $71 billion on telephone and communication equipment in 2017, nearly five times what they spent in 2010 even when adjusted for inflation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. . . . When we buy something new, we get rid of what’s old. That cycle of consumption has made electronics waste the world’s fastest-growing solid-waste stream.
That stream is expected to turn into a torrent3 as the world upgrades to 5G, the next big step in wireless technology. 5G promises faster speeds and other benefits. But experts say it will also result in a dramatic increase in e-waste, as millions of smartphones, modems and other gadgets incompatible with 5G networks are made obsolete. “I don’t think people understand the magnitude of the transition,” says ERI co-founder and executive chairman John Shegerian. “This is bigger than the change of black-and-white to color, bigger than analog to digital, by many multitudes.”
. . . Less than a quarter of all U.S. electronic waste is recycled, according to a United Nations estimate. The rest is incinerated or ends up in landfills. That’s bad news, as e-waste can contain harmful materials like mercury and beryllium that pose environmental risks.
Part of the problem is regulatory. Only 19 states have laws banning electronics from the regular trash. In states without such rules, like Nevada, electronics often end up in garbage and recycling bins, said Jeremy Walters, a community-relations manager for waste collector Republic Services. Environmental concerns aside, compacting flammable lithium-ion batteries with paper recycling can be dangerous; recycling centers have reported an uptick in fires.
Even when e-waste rules exist, it’s left up to consumers to handle their old devices properly. But recycling them can be a pain. Rather than just drop a used phone in a bin outside their homes, lots of people have to take their electronics to a store, which may pay them for it but could also charge them to get rid of it. Many consumers, paralyzed by the hassle or put off by the expense, simply throw their devices into the trash or stash them in a drawer, hoping they’ll just disappear. “We don’t necessarily have the measures to make sure people aren’t throwing it away,” Walters said.
One solution is to make electronics last as long as they once did. At ERI’s facility, Shegerian showed TIME [magazine] dozens of televisions from the 1970s and 1980s that stopped working only recently. Yet instead, technology companies are speeding the pace of obsolescence. Most smartphone batteries can’t be easily replaced when they stop holding a charge, new laptops don’t accept old cables, and software companies push upgrades that won’t run on old devices. “Our products today don’t last as long as they used to, and it’s a strategy by manufacturers to force us into shorter and shorter upgrade cycles,” said Kyle Wiens, the founder of iFixit, which publishes do-it-yourself repair guides. . . .
Some environmental groups say multibillion-dollar companies . . . should pick up the cost of recycling the devices they sell. Lawmakers in parts of Europe and Canada and in some U.S. states have passed so-called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws, which require manufacturers to establish and fund systems to recycle or collect obsolete products. . . .
. . . Some companies are increasing their recycling efforts on their own, whether for the economic benefit or the public relations boost.
From “The World Has an E-Waste Problem” by Alana Semuels from TIME Magazine, June 3, 2019. Copyright © 2019 TIME USA, LLC.
Electronics such as smartphones, computers, cameras, and large appliances contain toxins like lead, chromium, zinc, nickel, mercury, beryllium, and cadmium. These substances are bioaccumulative, which means that they accumulate over time in living organisms.
1obsolete: outdated and no longer useful
2Pallets: wooden platforms used to store or transport materials in a warehouse
3torrent: an outpouring
Question
Read this sentence from paragraph 1.
The scene is like a twisted . . . movie, with doomed gadgets riding an unrelenting conveyor belt into a machine that shreds them into piles of copper, aluminum and steel.
The words “twisted,” “doomed,” and “unrelenting” most affect the sentence by
- Aemphasizing that discarded devices are condemned to an unfortunate fate.
- Bexpressing a sense of desperation about the amount of waste from discarded devices.
- Cimplying that discarded devices are often disposed of in an inappropriate manner.
- Dsuggesting a feeling of doubt about solving the problem of discarded devices.
Show the answer
Correct answer: A
The question asks about the effect of the words “twisted,” “doomed,” and “unrelenting” on the last sentence of paragraph 1.
A. CORRECT. Paragraph 1 first describes the problem of discarded devices in terms of the scope of the problem (“about 6 million pounds . . . processed monthly”). The author then elaborates on the problem with a vivid description of the actual process; it is unfortunate that this process is necessary because, even though they are relatively new, these devices are no longer useful. These particular words emphasize the process of a once-useful device becoming a part of a “twisted . . . movie,” and “doomed” to be recycled by going through an “unrelenting” or never-ending conveyor belt.
B. Incorrect. In the excerpt, the author does express concern about the amount of waste from discarded devices, but this particular sentence is about what happens to the devices and the perspective that one has while watching the devices as they are being processed. In this description, the once-beloved devices have been destroyed, with only some useful parts being retained.
C. Incorrect. Although there is an indication in paragraphs 4–6 that some obsolete devices are disposed of inappropriately, this description is of an appropriate disposal—a recycling center developed specifically for these types of devices.
D. Incorrect. At this juncture in the excerpt, the author has not yet mentioned solving the problem of discarded devices; rather, the author is describing what happens to discarded devices that are appropriately recycled.
Question analysis
This word-choice question quotes the last sentence of the opening paragraph of “The World Has an E-Waste Problem,” in which old gadgets ride a conveyor belt into a shredder at a recycling plant. Students decide how the words “twisted,” “doomed” and “unrelenting” most affect the sentence. Each choice reads something negative into the words, so their connotations have to be matched to what this sentence describes.
- Grade level
- Grade 7 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- At grade 7 Explaining how word choices shape a sentence’s meaning and tone is everyday grade 7 work. The three words are quoted and sit in one sentence, though it comes from adult magazine prose and its comparison has a word cut by an ellipsis.
- Estimated difficulty
- Straightforward: two steps or one careful reading.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 2, skills and concepts · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- Figurative or literary language moderate
- Hard words minor
- Evidence
- Answered from one sentence or line
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 10, 760 words; question and choices: about grade 8, 91 words.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
The three words share one job: they cast once-loved gadgets as victims on a one-way ride to the shredder. Each wrong choice keeps the gloom but points it somewhere else, at the amount of waste, at improper dumping, or at the chances of fixing the problem. Students who ask what the words describe in this one sentence, rather than what the article worries about overall, settle on the gadgets’ fate quickly.
Figurative or literary language moderate Understanding the question
The sentence likens the plant to “a twisted . . . movie,” with a word cut by the ellipsis, and the effect lives in connotation: “doomed” and “unrelenting” turn gadgets on a conveyor belt into victims bound for a shredder. (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998)
Hard words minor Understanding the question
“Unrelenting” has to be known as never letting up, and the right choice restates “doomed” as “condemned to an unfortunate fate,” so the match is one of meaning, not of sound. (Perfetti, 2007; Freedle & Kostin, 1993)
Strategy: Ask what the three words describe in this one sentence and what feeling they share, then check each choice against the sentence itself rather than against the article as a whole.
Traps
- Wrong tone or attitude: Misjudges the tone, attitude or point of view, such as reading admiration as criticism, or taking a character's or subject's feelings for the author's.
- Wrong part of the text: A choice is true of another paragraph, stanza or speaker than the one asked about.
- Reads too much in: A reasonable-sounding conclusion that goes further than the text allows.
The wrong answers, classified
B Wrong tone or attitude (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994)
Hears despair in the grim words and ties “unrelenting” to the six million pounds a month, but the sentence follows the gadgets’ fate on the belt and voices no desperation about volume.
C Wrong part of the text (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990)
Takes “twisted” as a sign of wrongdoing and recalls the trash and landfills of paragraphs 4–6, though this scene is a recycling plant, the proper place for old devices.
D Reads too much in (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994)
Hears hopelessness in “doomed” and stretches it to the whole e-waste problem, though the sentence never turns to solutions, which the excerpt reaches only in paragraph 7.
Working it out, step by step
Find what the question asks
This is a word-choice question. Three words in one sentence work as a team: “twisted,” “doomed” and “unrelenting.” You need to find the feeling they create and what they describe. Stay inside this one sentence, not the whole article.
Read the last sentence of paragraph 1
Paragraph 1 ends: “The scene is like a twisted . . . movie, with doomed gadgets riding an unrelenting conveyor belt into a machine that shreds them into piles of copper, aluminum and steel.” The dots (. . .) mean some words were left out. A conveyor belt is a moving belt that carries things along, like the one at a grocery checkout. The “scene” is the recycling plant.
Work out each word
Each word adds something dark.
- Twisted means strange in a creepy way. A twisted movie is a dark one.
- Doomed means sure to meet a bad end, with no escape.
- Unrelenting means it never stops or slows down.
Put together, the gadgets sound like movie characters on a one-way ride. The belt keeps moving, and the shredder waits at the end.
Test the four choices
- A fits. “Condemned to an unfortunate fate” means sentenced to a bad ending. That is just what “doomed” says.
- B does not fit. The amount of waste, 6 million pounds a month, comes earlier. This sentence follows the gadgets, and no one sounds desperate.
- C does not fit. This is a recycling plant, the right place for old devices. Trash and landfills come later, in paragraphs 4–6.
- D does not fit. The sentence says nothing about fixing the problem. Solutions first come up in paragraph 7.
Pick the answer
Watch out: B is tempting because the words sound gloomy, and the plant handles a lot of waste. But gloom is not desperation, which means feeling out of hope. These words make you feel sorry for the gadgets themselves. So the answer is A.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
B is the closest wrong choice. The paragraph does show a huge pile of waste. But “doomed” and “unrelenting” point at what happens to each gadget: it rides the belt to the shredder and can’t get off. That is a sad fate, which is A, not a worry about how much waste there is.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Excerpt from “The World Has an E-Waste Problem”” as printed (pages 164–166)
