'our municipality should build a plant for burning trash'

"In order to avoid serious health threats associated with many landfills, our municipality should build a plant for burning trash. An incinerator could offer economic as well as ecological advantaged over the typical old-fashioned type of landfill: incinerators can be adapted to generate moderate amount of electricity, and ash residue from some types of trash can be used to condition soil."

In the given argument author concludes that incinerators could offer economic as well as ecological advantage over typical old-fashioned type of land-fills, so municipality should build plants for burning trash. In the support of the argument author has reasoned some ambiguous assumptions. That makes this argument not entirely logically convincing.

To begin with author assumes that landfills are hazardous for health, this assumption is a mere belief of the author. It could be argued that landfills cannot be threat for health because it is totally Eco-friendly method of dumping trash. If the trash is dumped then how it could cause any threat for people? Author fails to prove factually that landfills can cause health threats.

Furthermore he argued that incinerators are more Eco-friendly. Maybe he forgets about the smoke released by the trash when it burns. When the smoke will be released from the incinerators in the environment it will cause air pollution. On the contrary landfills do not produce such kind of pollution; rather landfills are more useful to stop air pollution.

Finally author omits the point that more capital is required to build plants for burning trash. He fails to show that show that incinerators are economical efficient than landfills. Incinerators are expensive and they require regular maintenance which is likely to increase the costs of the plant. On the other hand landfills are dumping the trash in moderate cost. They require neither maintenance cost nor implementation cost. Thus they are economically more beneficial.

To conclude, the argument, in the current state, contains a considerable number of defects, most blatant of which have been discussed above. Had the argument managed to provide factual evidence that landfills are health threats its persuasive ability would have been reinforced. Moreover presence of a data showing that incinerators are more Eco-friendly as well as producing considerable amount of electricity could make the argument more convincing, perhaps to such extent that it would be difficult to refute. However in current state, one must necessarily conclude that the argument is simply a hasty generalization, filled with overreaching assumptions and deficiencies in information.