SHSAT Sunset

Excerpt from “The World Has an E-Waste Problem”

2022 Handbook

2022 Test B English · Question 17 of 57

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 Pallets2 of once beloved but now outdated devices .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.

Diagram titled “ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF PERSISTENT BIOACCUMULATIVE TOXIC CHEMICALS IN ELECTRONIC DEVICES,” a cross-section of land with a layer labeled Soil over a layer labeled Groundwater. On the left, an arrow rises from an Unlined landfill to Air emissions, another leads from the landfill to a Wastewater treatment plant, which has an arrow into a pond of Surface water with a fish, and arrows point down from the landfill and from the pond through the soil to the groundwater; Air emissions has one arrow pointing right to a cloud labeled Rain, with raindrops falling, and another pointing down to a tree, beside which stand three people and a deer, with an arrow pointing up from the groundwater toward them. On the right, an arrow labeled Runoff points down the slope to a second pond of Surface water with fish, and an arrow running along the Groundwater layer also points right into that pond.

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

How does the diagram after paragraph 9 most support the claim made in paragraph 4?

  • AThe diagram suggests that people send large amounts of recyclable e-waste to landfills.
  • BThe diagram emphasizes that toxic chemicals in e-waste can easily spread from landfills.
  • CThe diagram implies that most landfills are poorly designed to accommodate e-waste.
  • DThe diagram shows that water sources near landfills are endangered by e-waste.
Show the answer

Correct answer: B

The question asks how the diagram after paragraph 9 supports the claim in paragraph 4 about environmental risks from e-waste.

A. Incorrect. The diagram includes an image of people as well as an “unlined landfill,” but it contains no information about the volume of e-waste that people place in the landfill. Rather, it seeks to show how waste in landfills impacts the environment in a broader sense through “air emissions” and “groundwater” contamination.

B. CORRECT. The diagram shows that toxic chemicals that are placed into an “unlined landfill” can produce “air emissions” that may affect rain and trees. These toxic chemicals may also seep into the soil and then, eventually, into the “groundwater” and “surface water.”

C. Incorrect. While it is true that the landfill in the diagram is labeled an “unlined landfill,” which presumably would allow more pollutants to seep into the soil, no claim is made in paragraph 4 about landfill design.

D. Incorrect. The diagram shows that water sources near landfills are at risk of pollution by the toxic chemicals in electronic devices, but water is only part of what it shows: the chemicals also spread through the air to the rain and the trees, so this option covers only part of the environmental risk in the diagram.

Question analysis

This question pairs a diagram with a paragraph in “The World Has an E-Waste Problem.” Students decide how the diagram after paragraph 9, titled “Environmental Impacts of Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxic Chemicals in Electronic Devices,” best supports the claim in paragraph 4 about recycling rates and harmful materials such as mercury. The choices mix what the paragraph states, what the diagram pictures and what it only hints at.

NYS standards
  • 7R1 textual evidence and inferences
  • 7R8 evaluating arguments and claims
  • 7R5 structure and genre features
Grade level
Grade 8 reading and task
Compared with grade 7
Above grade 7 Connecting a diagram to a claim in the text is grade 7 work, but this diagram has many labels and arrows, its key word “bioaccumulative” is explained only in a caption, and the claim it supports sits five paragraphs earlier.
Estimated difficulty
Among the hardest on the SHSAT: a non-obvious approach, heavy reading, or a well-hidden trap.
Evidence
Answered from several paragraphs or stanzas
Reading level
Passage: about grade 10, 760 words; question and choices: about grade 9, 63 words.
Corrected from the DOE handbook
  • An inaccurate statement about the diagram in the explanation was corrected.
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

Two choices describe what the diagram really shows, and the question turns on which matches paragraph 4’s broad point that harmful materials in e-waste “pose environmental risks.” Water is the easiest route to trace, with arrows into groundwater and two ponds, so the narrower choice feels complete; the arrows rising to air emissions, rain and a tree show the spread goes further. The other two choices pull students who answer from paragraph 4’s statistics or from the single word “Unlined.”

  1. Reading a figure, table or graph major Understanding the question

    The support is carried by arrows, not sentences: up from the unlined landfill to air emissions, rain and a tree, down through the soil to groundwater, and on toward people, a deer and a pond with fish. (Lesh, Post & Behr, 1987; Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990)

  2. A very close wrong answer moderate Choosing the answer

    The choice about water sources is true of the diagram, which shows groundwater and two ponds at risk, and differs from the right one only in leaving out the spread through the air. (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987; Gorin & Embretson, 2006; Ascalon et al., 2007)

  3. Evidence in several places moderate Working it out

    The claim is in paragraph 4, about mercury and beryllium in landfilled e-waste, while the diagram comes after paragraph 9, so the two have to be brought together across the whole excerpt. (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990; Gorin & Embretson, 2006)

  4. Hard words minor Understanding the question

    The title’s “Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxic Chemicals” is explained only by the caption below it, which says the toxins build up in living things, and the link to e-waste depends on reading it. (Perfetti, 2007; Freedle & Kostin, 1993)

Strategy: State the claim in paragraph 4 in your own words, read the diagram’s title, labels, arrows and caption, and then test each choice against both, keeping one that the paragraph and the diagram both support.

Traps

  • Too narrow: A single detail offered as the central idea or a summary, or a summary that keeps minor details and leaves out an essential part.
  • 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

What was corrected from the DOE handbook, and why

  • Explanation: The handbook rejects Option D because the diagram shows water at risk of pollution “by anything in the landfill” and “makes no mention of e-waste in particular.” But the diagram is titled “Environmental Impacts of Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxic Chemicals in Electronic Devices,” and its caption says that electronics such as smartphones, computers, cameras and large appliances contain toxins like lead and mercury; the correct answer itself depends on the diagram being about the chemicals in e-waste. What makes D weaker is that it covers only water, while the diagram also shows the chemicals spreading through the air to the rain and the trees. The site now says so. The answer, B, is unchanged.

How the questions are analyzed, and the research behind it

Working it out, step by step

  1. Sort out the question

    This asks how a diagram supports a claim. A claim is something the author says is true. The claim is in paragraph 4. The diagram comes after paragraph 9. Your job is to link the two.

  2. Read the claim in paragraph 4

    Paragraph 4 says most U.S. e-waste is burned or buried. Then it warns that “e-waste can contain harmful materials like mercury and beryllium that pose environmental risks.” To pose a risk means to put something in danger. So the claim is that the poisons in e-waste can harm the world around us.

  3. Read the title and the caption

    The title is “ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF PERSISTENT BIOACCUMULATIVE TOXIC CHEMICALS IN ELECTRONIC DEVICES.” Toxic means poisonous. Persistent means they last a long time. The caption under the diagram says phones and computers hold toxins such as lead and mercury. These build up over time in living things. That is what “bioaccumulative” means. So the diagram is about the poisons in e-waste.

  4. Follow the arrows

    Start at the box labeled “Unlined landfill.” Unlined means it has no layer at the bottom to hold the waste in.

    • One arrow rises to “Air emissions,” then on to the rain cloud and a tree.
    • Arrows point down through the soil to the groundwater, the water under the ground.
    • Another leads to a wastewater plant and then a pond with a fish.
    • Groundwater flows into a second pond, and an arrow points up toward people and a deer.

    The poisons travel in many directions.

  5. Test each choice

    • A does not fit. The diagram shows no amounts and doesn’t say which waste could be recycled.
    • B fits. The arrows show the chemicals spreading from the landfill by air, soil and water.
    • C does not fit. It shows one unlined landfill, not most landfills. Paragraph 4 says nothing about how landfills are built.
    • D is only partly right. Water is at risk, but the diagram also shows poisons moving through the air to rain and a tree.

  6. Choose the answer

    Watch out: D is tempting, because the water arrows are the easiest to follow, and they are real. But D leaves out the air. Paragraph 4 warns of risks to the whole environment, and B covers every path. So the answer is B.

Why this answer and not the closest wrong one

D is the closest wrong choice, because the groundwater and both ponds really are at risk. But that is only part of the picture. The arrow up to “Air emissions” carries the chemicals to rain and trees as well. B says the poisons spread easily from landfills, and that matches every arrow.

More questions like this

The original DOE question

Question 17 as printed on page 168 of the DOE handbook.
As printed in the DOE’s NYC Guide to the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) for 2023 Admissions, page 168, question 17. Open page 168 of the handbook (PDF) This is the DOE’s version, before the corrections listed in the analysis.
The passage “Excerpt from “The World Has an E-Waste Problem”” as printed (pages 164–166)The passage “Excerpt from “The World Has an E-Waste Problem”” as printed on page 164 of the DOE handbook.The passage “Excerpt from “The World Has an E-Waste Problem”” as printed on page 165 of the DOE handbook.The passage “Excerpt from “The World Has an E-Waste Problem”” as printed on page 166 of the DOE handbook.