Lost Comments

Grace and Mrs. Bell ~ I tried to publish your comments, but I seem to have lost them. I think I can recover them using my email, but I don't have access to that right now because I am in Minnesota at the PGA Championships and I don't have access to my home computer. So if you would like you can post a comment again or just wait until Monday or Tuesday and see if I have recovered them. So sorry! {The following is an update, posted 28August2009} Mrs. Bell ~ I never was able to recover your comment. I think you asked me if I thought that arguments can sometimes be made more effectively using images. In answer, yes, I do think that is sometimes the case. Although there are some arguments that seem hard to communicate through image only. That is where the written or spoken argument comes in! Thank you so much for making this class so fun already. :)

CRI WasteCounter

I discovered this and I thought it would nicely compliment my previous post.

Assignment 1 - Visual Argument

The photo above is the detail of the photo below at actual size. The photo below depicts 2 million plastic beverage containers - the number used in the U.S. every five minutes.

The above photos [http://chrisjordan.com/] argue the extensive plastic bottle waste in America, which I agree is a real issue. Nearly 2.5 million plastic bottles are thrown away every hour in America. To conceptualize this, take the bottom photo and multiply it thirty times. The result is the number of plastic bottles thrown away instead of recycled daily in the U.S. Yearly that amounts to 21,900 million wasted bottles. What might make a difference in these numbers? Considering container deposit laws for all bottles, including water and non-carbonated beverages, may entice consumers to recycle. Currently there are only eleven states with container deposit laws (However, many do not include non-carbonated beverage containers in the legislation.). Residents in states holding container deposit laws recycle their soda bottles at an average rate of 75%, compared to 34% in other states. Enticing consumers to recycle with container deposit legislation could possibly cut the number of wasted bottles in half. [I’ve included a link to the Clean Air Council web page that offers interesting waste facts and figures.]

http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html