Rhetorical Analysis

Student ID: 1606071

Word Count: 1197

Saving the Environment, One Rhetorical Choice at a Time

My family never had to buy trash bags because one of my grandma’s hobbies is collecting different bags from the grocery store, delivering service companies, and restaurants. Her hobby made it so we always had boxes of plastic products in our house, each one only used once, then it became a trash bag. One day, after I cleaned up another box of those things, I thought were we actually using these plastic things after their original uses? The answer was no. We throw away take out boxes which the government then throws them somewhere else. There are always signs protesting to save the environment, but after these protests are over, the wastes are everywhere. The unfinished water bottles, snack bags, and even the slogan boards encouraging people to save the environment are littered everywhere. People keep talking about how we should do something to save the environment, but actually we are the cause of all of the problems.

In No Impact Man Colin Beavan talks about his family during their year-long experiment to change their lifestyle and try to have zero impact on the environment. Beavan’s goal in doing this experiment was to show others that they could make some small changes to their lifestyles that would have enormous benefits to the environment. In “Chapter 4”, Beavan tries to change his living ways to reach the goal which reduces pollution in the environment. He spends the whole day trying to find the French Net Bags because he thought it is the best eco bag and it could replace their plastic bags; he tries to do grocery shopping to cook by himself because they used to order takeout food everyday and it causes lots of plastic wastes. Beavan tries to do the right things, but he uses the wrong ways to persuade us. Beavan’s living style will make people feel impractical because his social class is different than most people.

Beavan tried to influence people who came from the same social class as him to focus on the waste problem, but he lacks ethos and pathos in his book. For example, Beavan’s different social class makes him less credible to a middle to lower class audience because we cannot relate to his lifestyle. People like Beavan have extra money, time, and passion to make a “no impact” world. The lower to middle classes have work, study, families, and other things to take care of, but Beavan’s no impact project is his livelihood; his work requires him to put all his heart into this project and the environment. One of Beavan’s ideas, which seems impractical for the lower to middle class readers, is using zero plastic. Our daily life relies on plastic in different areas: the needle tubing, the cosmetic container, the modulator tube, even the component assembly for all technology products. Beavan wants people to find something which can replace the plastic, but those products are hard to find and expensive to buy. Some of the products are only accessible to specific social classes, like billionaires, national leaders, or Royalty. However, for normal consumers, plastic is inescapable. Even technology, such as Apple products, have to use plastic. Beavan’s examples, like a French Net Bag replacing plastic bags, and takeout every night, make people less interested in his project because they are more relatable to his social class, but they are far from us. Not only does this make him less reliable to a middle-class audience, but also his examples lack emotional connection, or pathos. Therefore, normal consumers like us will not have an interest in Beavan’s footsteps and will not worry about buying a French Net Bag. He is trying to spread the right idea “no waste life” to everyone, but the genre, a non-fiction work which comes from Beavan’s personal experiences, is not influential because his personal experiences lack pathos compared to visuals. Instead, what would be more influential to the average consumer would be these visuals that show how plastic damages the environment.

Beavan’s book and the previous visual images are talking about the same thing; however, Beavan throws his unrealistic “no impact” idea at us whereas the visual art is emotionally persuasive in making people be conscious about their use of plastic. Beavan’s book could not alert the society in the same way to recognize how plastic pollution is affecting innocent animals. For example, the left side picture I found on google is called, “turtle and plastic.” The turtle was entangled by a plastic wrap when he was young. After he grew up, his turtle shell has a malformation, like a U shape, which is harmful for a turtle to grow up with. Even he cannot grow up because the plastic is limiting his growth. The right side picture, a screenshot from a video (link is below), does the same thing as the left picture in evoking emotion. Both pictures will make the audiences feel more emotions that will cause them to change their behavior. The video shows an insignificant straw which blocked sea turtle’s nostril. It took rescue teams eight minutes to take it out and the turtle was bleeding the whole time. The video will evoke a stronger emotional response from people and it might make them rethink about using straws (or some other unnecessary plastic products) because their convenience depends on destroying our nature.

As we know, turtles eat jellyfish as food, but starving turtles also eat plastic bags because they look like jellyfish. People dump plastic waste into the ocean every year; even they know those wastes do not belong to the ocean. The wastes will lead to grave consequences especially for marine animals - they will get entangled or accidentally swallow plastic while feeding. The plastic wastes will cause digestive issues after turtles eat it, such as starvation or death. “According to the Sea Turtle Conservancy, over 100 million marine animals die each year due to marine debris; and more than half of the world’s sea turtles have ingested some plastic or human trash” (Clearwater Marine Aquarium). Direct images that show these effects would be more likely to persuade people to do something for the environment compared to Beavan’s personal experiences and his ability to afford a “no impact” lifestlye.

Comparing No Impact Man with the images of turtles, people will get more shocked by the pictures and videos because this is happening in real life. It is persuasive because people saw how marine animals are suffering by human wastes. We should use the most effective genre to influence people if we really want to change things. All pollution we see in our life is more effective in persuading change than Beavan’s project. Instead of relying on books, news, or blogs to learn about pollution, we should go out to nature to discover what we can do personally to help the environment. Rather than following in Beavan’s steps, we can make some small changes everyday, like bringing our own cup or glass straw to coffee shops, bringing own glass lunch boxes to restaurants to take out food, or using canvas bags for any shopping. As long as we are more conscious about plastic wastes, these small actions will make a difference.

iWhat about the problem? Is there any important? Which one is ethos? About culture? Maybe conclusion? Or body??

Intro…….. Two to three pages about analysis, what are those news suggest me??

Break up to logos, ethos,....... Use this structures

Conclusion: first person…… what should I do?? What should we change? Personal connection to the topic…. Pollution situation about two countries??????

Work Cited

Anonymous. “Why Plastic Is a Problem for Sea Turtles and the Ocean”. Cleanwater Marine Aquarium, 9 May 2017. Retrieved from: https://www.seewinter.com/plastic-problem-inside-sea-turtles/

Beavan, Colin. No Impact Man, Picador, 2009.

Feltman, Rachel. “More than half the world’s sea turtles have eaten plastic,

new study claims”. The Washington Post, 15 September 2015. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/09/15/more-than-half-the-worlds-sea-turtles-have-eaten-plastic-new-study-claims/?utm_term=.bae71da94144

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