PrepTest 136

Incorrect. While the stimulus states that a requirement would lead to many residents putting more recyclables in with their trash, that doesn't support this answer. It could be that "many" is actually over 50% in this case, and "more recyclables" is all of them. These words, on the LSAT, set up minimum guarantees, but it doesn't preclude a larger amount.

Incorrect. The stimulus notes that many residents will put "more" recyclables in with their regular garbage, which leaves open the possibility that these residents will continue to recycle some but not all (and less) of their recyclables.

Incorrect. The stimulus discusses the sanitation department's budget, not the overall city budget, so this answer is out of scope.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Must Be True

Stimulus Summary:
Residents required to sort recycling → More recyclables in regular garbage → More recycling in landfill
not Residents required to sort recycling → not Sanitation dept. stays within budget

Answer Anticipation:
Must Be True questions—especially ones that don't task you with finding an answer that's most strongly supported—frequently feature conditional logic, so you should have started thinking about diagramming as soon as you saw that opening "If . . . "

From there, since the first and second sentences built into each other ("This would result in . . . "), we built that chain straight into the Summary instead of writing it out as two separate statements. This can be a solid time-saver, especially when there are a lot of individual conditional statements.

The pivot statement provides a reason to believe the final conditional, but it's not a part of the conditional itself. You should keep it in the back of your mind in case an answer talks about the costs of having city workers sort the garbage, but we're going to anticipate based on the conditionals. Using "unless" as "if not," we have the diagram as noted in our Summary, and it shares a term with our existing chain, so we should take the contrapositive and combine our premises, and the contrapose the chain so we have everything we need to analyze the answers:
Sanitation dept. stays within budget → Residents required to sort recycling
More recyclables in regular garbage → More recycling in landfill
not More recycling in landfill → not More recyclables in regular garbage →
not Residents required to sort recycling → not Sanitation dept. stays within budget

Answer Explanation:
This answer lines up with our anticipation, combining all of the conditional statements together, so it's correct. The sanitation staying in its budget requires residents being required to sort their recycling, which will result in more recyclables in the regular garbage and thus more recyclables in the landfill.

Key Takeaway:
Look for conditional logic in Must Be True questions—when it shows up, the approach to the question becomes mechanical!

Incorrect. This answer is a reversal of the last statement in the stimulus, so it's unsupported.