The following appeared in a memorandum written by the chairperson of the West Egg Town Council."Two years ago, consultants predicted that West Egg's landfill, which is used for garbage disposal, would be completely filled within five years. During the pas

Consultants have predicted that the landfill in West Egg’s would completely fill up within 5 years. This prediction was made 2 years ago; at the same time as when residents began to recycle twice as much as the previous years. Next month, the chairperson of the town council foresees an increase in recycling because charges for pickup for other household garbage will double. Ninety percents of surveyors say that would recycle in more in the future. Therefore the chairperson has reasons to believe that the landfill should last longer than predicted. This is an admirable attempt on the residents to protect the environment. However, we don’t have enough evidence to show that the landfill won’t get filled up within the next 3 years.

Before we can assume that it will take longer to fill up the landfill, we need to have some of the following key information: What is the percentage of garbage presently covering the landfill? The charges for pickup. And the number of residents that took the survey.

Unless we know how much garbage is in the landfill at present time it would be fallacious to say that that it will last longer than 5 years. How much garbage was disposed before the residents started to recycle? We are 2 years in, and the number of garbage could be half filled up. With the decrease of increase of recycling, we could say that the landfill will be 3/5 filled up for the next year. That leaves us with 2 years left.

The charges for garbage pick up will double. How much will the charges be? The increase may not be significantly be high enough for the residents to be more concerned about recycling. Some may be more conscious of recycling, some may not give a hoot.

The 90% of surveyors who said that they would recycle more in the future; how many residents of the 90% is that? It could be 9/10 people. We don’t know for sure, so the survey is not a good indicator to predict the decrease of garbage disposal. A better question to have ask the residents is: If they have been recycling for the past year.

With some weak evidences to show that the prediction for the landfill will last longer, we cannot full assume that it will. Key informations such as: the amount of garbage that is already presently in the landfill, the cost of the increase garbage pickup charges, and the number of residents who took the survey need to be taking into account before making such presumption.