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 Pallets2 of once beloved but now outdated devices .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
The details in paragraphs 4–5 develop a central idea of the excerpt mainly by suggesting that
- Athe toxic components of e-waste make waste collectors reluctant to process electronic devices.
- Bcommunities across the nation have taken different approaches to the management of e-waste.
- Cincreased amounts of e-waste will further intensify a problem that is already inadequately addressed.
- Dthe methods that are used for disposing of non-electronic waste are inefficient for e-waste.
Show the answer
Correct answer: C
The question asks how paragraphs 4–5 develop a central idea of the excerpt.
A. Incorrect. Though “e-waste can contain harmful materials like mercury and beryllium” (paragraph 4) and recycling it “can be dangerous” (paragraph 5), the reluctance of recyclers to take e-waste is not a central idea of the excerpt. The excerpt indicates that some recycling companies, like ERI, take electronics and process many of them.
B. Incorrect. It is true that “only 19 states” have laws about not putting old electronics in the trash (paragraph 5), but these paragraphs do not discuss any other approaches that certain communities across the country have tried to implement.
C. CORRECT. These paragraphs highlight problems that already exist and that have been made worse by increasing amounts of e-waste: too much e-waste that is “incinerated or ends up in landfills” and the environmental problems this creates (paragraph 4), as well as the fact that “electronics often end up in garbage and recycling bins” even though they do not belong there (paragraph 5). This develops the central idea in that increasing e-waste is yet another human-made environmental problem that adds layers to the existing problems with too much trash and environmental degradation.
D. Incorrect. There is some indication in these paragraphs that disposing of e-waste creates new and specific problems. However, this is not one of the central ideas of the excerpt, as the problem is more complex than this and involves the design of these devices as well as people’s lack of knowledge and willingness to dispose of these devices appropriately.
Question analysis
This central-idea question asks how the details in paragraphs 4–5 of “The World Has an E-Waste Problem,” with figures on recycling, harmful materials such as mercury and beryllium, and state laws on electronics in the trash, develop a central idea of the excerpt. Each choice builds on a real detail from these paragraphs, so students must see what the details add up to.
- Grade level
- Grade 8 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- Above grade 7 Tracing how two paragraphs develop a central idea is grade 7 work, but this dense magazine prose packs statistics, toxic metals and state laws into a few lines, and the idea must be inferred and linked to the rest of the excerpt.
- Estimated difficulty
- Hard: combines ideas, needs a plan, and has more than one tempting wrong answer.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 3, strategic thinking · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- Reading between the lines moderate
- Evidence in several places moderate
- A lot to read minor
- Evidence
- Answered from several paragraphs or stanzas
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 10, 760 words; question and choices: about grade 13, 69 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
Every choice grows from something really in paragraphs 4 and 5, so none can be ruled out by a quick scan. The strongest pull comes from paragraph 5’s warning about compacting lithium-ion batteries with paper recycling, which makes a point about ordinary disposal methods sound well supported, though the excerpt calls them dangerous, not inefficient. The right choice is the only one that adds the paragraphs up and connects them to the growth in e-waste described just before.
Reading between the lines moderate Working it out
Neither paragraph says the problem will get worse or is poorly handled in so many words; that comes from joining the low recycling rate and the patchy state laws to the coming “torrent” of discarded devices. (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998)
Evidence in several places moderate Working it out
“Increased amounts” point back to paragraph 3’s 5G upgrade, so paragraphs 4–5 must be read with the one before them and with the excerpt’s central idea, not as a pair on their own. (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990; Gorin & Embretson, 2006)
A lot to read minor Understanding the question
Two short paragraphs pack in a UN estimate, mercury and beryllium, 19 states, Nevada, a Republic Services manager and battery fires, and each wrong choice builds on one of these facts. (Kintsch, 1998; Gorin & Embretson, 2006; Freedle & Kostin, 1993)
Strategy: Restate what paragraphs 4 and 5 show together in one sentence, then pick the choice that those paragraphs support and that also runs through the whole excerpt, not one detail inside them.
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.
- Reads too much in: A reasonable-sounding conclusion that goes further than the text allows.
- Twists what the text says: Uses the text's topic and ideas but changes what it says: who did it, how much, when, or why.
The wrong answers, classified
A Reads too much in (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994)
Joins the harmful metals of paragraph 4 to the fires of paragraph 5 and concludes that collectors shy away from e-waste, though ERI processes about 6 million pounds a month.
B Too narrow (King et al., 2004)
Builds on the 19 states with trash bans and states like Nevada without them, a single detail of paragraph 5 rather than the idea the two paragraphs develop together.
D Twists what the text says (King et al., 2004)
Turns the danger of compacting lithium-ion batteries with paper recycling, and the risks of landfills and incinerators, into a claim about inefficiency, a point the excerpt never makes.
Working it out, step by step
Understand the question
This asks what paragraphs 4 and 5 add to a central idea. A central idea is a big point the whole excerpt makes. Here, it is that e-waste is a growing problem. So read the two paragraphs together, and ask what they show about that problem.
Read paragraph 4
Paragraph 4 says, “Less than a quarter of all U.S. electronic waste is recycled.” A quarter is one out of four parts. “The rest is incinerated or ends up in landfills.” Incinerated means burned. A landfill is a huge dump where trash is buried. That is risky, because e-waste can hold harmful metals like mercury and beryllium.
Read paragraph 5
Paragraph 5 opens, “Part of the problem is regulatory.” That means it is about rules and laws. Only 19 states ban electronics from the regular trash. In other states, old electronics often go into garbage and recycling bins. Batteries crushed with paper can even start fires.
Add the two paragraphs up
Together, these paragraphs show a problem that is already handled poorly. Most e-waste is not recycled, and many states have no rules. Now recall paragraph 3. It says the stream of e-waste will become a “torrent,” an outpouring, as people switch to 5G. More waste will make a badly handled problem worse.
Weigh each choice
- A does not fit. Nothing says collectors refuse e-waste. ERI processes millions of pounds of it every month.
- B does not fit. The only difference named is whether a state has a trash ban. That one detail is not what the two paragraphs build together.
- C fits. More e-waste will deepen a problem that is not being handled well now.
- D does not fit. The excerpt calls burning, burying and crushing harmful or dangerous. It never calls them inefficient, meaning they waste time or effort.
Settle on the answer
Watch out: D is tempting because paragraph 5 warns about batteries in paper recycling. But that warning is about danger, not about wasted effort. So the answer is C.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
D is the closest wrong choice, since paragraph 5 does show ordinary trash methods going wrong for e-waste. But the problem it names is fire and harm. C is the only choice that adds up both paragraphs: little recycling and few rules, with much more waste on the way.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Excerpt from “The World Has an E-Waste Problem”” as printed (pages 164–166)
