Research Paper Outline

Recycling Paper Outline

I. Introduction

1.     Hook: Do you really think about what happens when you throw that water bottle in the recycling bin? What about when you toss away the newspaper from this morning?

2.     Thesis: The cost effectiveness adds to the environmental benefits of recycling, it is not only good for the earth, but it is good for the pockets of the people.

3.     Implications: What was the conventional thought before? Why did people think that recycling was costly? Was it before and now after new improvements in the process is it not? How does it help the environment/economy? (just a few possibilities not go completely into it)

II. The Background Behind Recycling

o   History of recycling, how it all began, who thought of it, why, where it got started

o   The ‘advertisement’/enticement to get people to recycle à what’s the point? Why did people think it would be a good idea to start reusing things

III. Economics/Environmental Implications (split up into multiple paragraphs)

1.     How recycling helps the environment while saving money à landfills can stay open longer, meaning less money spent building new landfills (source 2)

2.     The different factors helping/hurting the effectiveness of recycling à introduce counter argument, in how if these factors don’t line up it’s not effective (source 1)

a.     How some types of recycling are cheaper than others à glass and plastic isn’t economical where as aluminum and paper are money saving (source 4)

b.     Make sure to fully define the counter argument here à how certain times recycling can be highly ineffective/costly

3.     Taxpayer’s money & how the government spends in on recycling à goes with 1, possibly put in together with #1 (source 3)

4.     Give numerical data about the costs of recycling/the routes and what they are picking up in the routes. Bigger bins & how many bins at each house can cut down on costs (source 5)

IV. Conclusion

o   Summarize the main arguments of the paper

o   So what? à recycling does help the environment but also can help the economy of the cities/towns that put in place these programs (qualifying argument?)

o   Many people pass judgment on recycling before knowing the actual facts, not exactly a bad thing but can hurt the overall image of recycling