Model Essay 8: Plastic Waste
Question type: causes and solutions. Environment questions attract the most memorised writing of any topic, which makes an unexpected point unusually valuable here.
Unofficial original RCF practice material
Original question and essay written by RCF English. Not endorsed by the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia or Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
The question
The amount of plastic waste produced worldwide continues to increase.
What are the causes of this, and what solutions can you suggest?
Write at least 250 words.
The most over-used essay in IELTS
Environmental questions produce more memorised answers than any other topic. We should raise awareness, the government should impose strict laws, and people should recycle more appears in thousands of scripts a week and is worth very little, because it names no mechanism and could be attached to any problem at all.
The essay below deliberately avoids all three. Notice that it treats recycling as part of the problem, which is both defensible and the sort of thing an examiner has not read forty times that morning.
The plan
| Paragraph | Content |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Signal both halves and preview the argument: plastic is cheap and its costs are paid by someone else. |
| Body 1 | Causes: plastic is extraordinarily cheap to produce and the cost of disposal falls on no one who makes the decision. Plus the shift to single-use packaging. |
| Body 2 | Why recycling has not solved it: much plastic is not economically recyclable, and the belief that it is has reduced pressure to use less. |
| Body 3 | Solutions that follow: put disposal cost onto producers, and require reusable packaging where it is practical. |
| Conclusion | The principle: make the person who chooses the packaging pay for its disposal. |
The model essay
Question: The amount of plastic waste produced worldwide continues to increase. What are the causes of this, and what solutions can you suggest?
Plastic waste keeps increasing for a straightforward economic reason. Plastic is very cheap to make, and almost none of the cost of dealing with it afterwards falls on the person who chooses to use it. Any solution that does not change that will not work.
The first cause is the material itself. Plastic is light, strong, clean and extremely cheap, so for a manufacturer choosing packaging it is nearly always the sensible choice. The second cause is a change in the way goods are sold. Food that was once bought loose, or delivered in containers that were returned and refilled, now arrives individually wrapped. The growth of home delivery has added a second layer of packaging around the first. Neither change happened because customers asked for plastic; both happened because of cost and convenience elsewhere in the chain.
It is worth asking why recycling has not solved this, because a great deal of hope has been placed on it. Much plastic packaging is made of mixed or coloured plastics that are not worth separating, so it is exported, buried or burned whichever bin it was put in. The more serious problem is that believing plastic is recyclable has taken the pressure off using less of it. A recycling symbol reassures the person buying the product, and that reassurance is exactly what reduces the demand for change.
The solutions follow from the causes. Producers should pay the full cost of disposing of the packaging they choose, so that the cheapest option for them becomes the cheapest option for everyone else. Where refillable systems are practical, as they are for drinks, cleaning products and dry goods, they should be required rather than merely encouraged.
The principle is simple. Whoever chooses the packaging should pay for getting rid of it.
Why this answer works
- Causes and solutions are genuinely linked. The fourth paragraph solves the exact problem named in the first - that disposal costs fall on someone other than the person choosing. Most essays fail this by proposing solutions unconnected to their own causes.
- The recycling paragraph is the best idea in the essay, and it is the opposite of the expected one. Arguing that a supposed remedy is part of the problem is memorable and shows independent thought.
- **No raise awareness, no strict laws, no people should recycle more.** Every proposal names a mechanism and says who acts.
- Causes are explained rather than listed. The second cause is not there is more packaging now; it is an account of why there is, and who drove it.
- Honest about uncertainty: much plastic packaging, where refillable systems are practical. Qualifiers of this kind are more convincing than invented percentages.
- The conclusion is a single-sentence principle. After a dense essay, brevity reads as confidence.
- 297 words. Band 7 to 7.5, and note that the whole essay uses ordinary vocabulary.
Language worth borrowing
- almost none of the cost falls on the person who chooses to use it
- States an externality in plain English. Transfers to pollution, traffic, water use and much else.
- Any solution that does not change that will not work.
- Sets a test your own solutions then have to pass - a useful discipline.
- It is worth asking why X has not solved this
- Introduces a paragraph that challenges an assumption the reader holds.
- that reassurance is exactly what reduces the demand for change
- A counter-intuitive causal claim in plain words.
- should be required rather than merely encouraged
- Distinguishes two strengths of policy - far more precise than the government should take action.
Check your own attempt
- Does each solution address a cause you actually named?
- Did you avoid raise awareness and impose strict laws?
- Does every proposal say who does what?
- Did you explain why your causes came about, or only state them?
- Are you between 260 and 300 words?
Now try this variation
A large proportion of the food produced in the world is thrown away. What are the causes, and what could be done to reduce it?
The same economic frame works: who decides, and who pays. Try to find the equivalent of the recycling point - the widely praised remedy that quietly makes the problem easier to ignore.
Share this
Next
Essay 9: Ageing populations
Advantages and disadvantages.
All ten essays
The full list by question type.