Aramian 2
Sydney Aramian
Professor Jex
English 226: Rhetorical Analysis
15 June 2019
Save the Oceans
The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced. Plastic wasn’t invented until the late 19th century, and production really only took off around 1950, we have a mere 9.2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6.9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a staggering 6.3 billion tons never made it to a recycling bin—a figure that stunned the scientists who crunched the numbers in 2017 (Parker, 2018). Human litter is causing ocean levels to rise, and more animals are starting to appear on the endangered list every year. “This isn’t a problem where we don’t know what the solution is,” says Ted Siegler, a Vermont resource economist who has spent more than 25 years working with developing nations on garbage. “We know how-to pick-up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to dispose of it. We know how to recycle.” It’s a matter of building the necessary institutions and systems, he says—ideally before the ocean turns, irretrievably and for centuries to come, into a thin soup of plastic.
In the print ad “Save the Ocean, Help Ban Plastic Bags”, The Surf Channel discusses the importance of cleaning the 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris currently in the ocean. The ad includes a picture of two sushi rolls that are made out of plastic bags. The bold blue words in the ad read, “what goes in the ocean goes in you”. Along with the ad there is an attached article with other factual information from experts and scientists. Throughout, the article they use video clips to show graphic material in hopes of opening minds to help save the oceans. There is a total of three videos shown throughout the article. Each video is directed toward a different topic; including, California’s plastic bag ban, plastics kill, and ending our addiction to plastic bags. Each and every fact put into the ad, each video, and the article are credible and realistic. The ad itself does a significant job of getting the message out to its audience. It tolls with the readers emotions, uses credible facts, and appeals to logic to persuade the audience with reasoning. Overall, the print ad does an effective job in portraying and defending the thesis of saving the ocean.
The purpose of this advertisement is to convince people to start being more cautious with how they handle their plastic waste. Most of us do not realize how badly the life inside our oceans are being affected. In 2018, hundreds of tons of dead fish were found washing up on Florida’s west coast beaches. Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in several Florida counties because of this. It's also killing endangered sea turtles, dolphins and manatees (Martin, 2018). The advertisement uses one fact to introduce logos. The ad states, “rec...
