Conrad
Gonzales
English 1B
4/20/2014
Duty of Care
In the essay, Duty of Care, I was instantly distraught with the facts that the author, John
McPhee, explained about the tire pile in California, in the regions near Modesto and Merced. It made
me realized how bad of a problem this is. The essay really made me feel concerned and made me want
to do something about the tire issue. That is exactly what the author is trying to do the audience in my
opinion. The audience is the general public, or anyone that owns or operates a vehicle that uses tires,
and he tries to get them to realize what the long term affect that the mass existence of used tires has on
the environment. The author gives several examples and honest facts to support his reasons and to
sound qualified enough to get his point across. The tire stack reaches to six stories in some places, and
the tires are all but sitting there and just rotting away. He educes a level of fear almost to the audience
to get them to really think about the importance of the issue.
McPhee states in one paragraph, "Of the problem the tire pile represents, everybody is the
cause, and the problem like the pile is increasing."(702) This is McPhee saying that everyone is
contributing to the issue and also means that everyone is responsible for their part of the tire waste
problem. He excludes no one, and says everyone is at fault for the problem, because like I said before,
he is targeting all of us and wants the general public to make a difference, or at least make a realization
that this is an actual legit issue that needs attention before it gets worse. Everyone might not own a car
but everyone has been in a vehicle that uses or has used tires in some way and It is safe to say that at
least one of those tires ended up in the tire pit outside of Stockton, where there are millions of tires
currently roasting in the sun. McPhee makes a point to state that the tire pile is practically overlooked as
an environmentally detrimental issue, and not many people care or know about the increasing issue.
McPhee then tells us about a scenario or a experience that he had with the man that manages
the place went by the name Jim Rizzo, "Now Rizzo and I were on a dirt road in what appeared to be on a
field of dry tires, eye-high. There was open water beyond. He said that the tires were protruding above
the surface of the pond and were resting on other tires, which went all the way to the bottom. They
were standing in the water as deep or deeper than most of the Atlantic ocean dumping sites."(703)
Realizing that the tires are reaching the surface of the pond is mind boggling. He attacks the readers or
the audience in the heart in a lot of his supporting evidence. Here his is simply showing us his experience
at the actual tire pile while also hitting us with a decent reality check. To realize that the tires are
actually reaching the surface of the pond or the "tip" that is deeper than most of the Atlantic dumping
sites, is crazy. It means that the pile has gotten this large without much outrage from the general public.
"A tip is a place where material is dumped, as from wagons. This tip is what was left of the Stiles
Brick Company, which in the nineteenth century and along into the twentieth had dug out two hundred
thousand cubic yards of clay. The pond was a hundred and forty feet deep. No mosquitoes, no pests, no
fires." (703) This means that the pond was filled with tires for one hundred and forty feet and some on
top of that. He does have some positives about using the pond as a way to store the used tires, for
example he gave the positive remark about the fact that there are no mosquito problems, there are no
pests, and most importantly there are no fires. Tire fires take mass and mass amounts of water to
extinguish and some are so strong that state officials just rather let the fire burn out and die then try to
put it out. But there still is the over bearing fact that the pond is still stacked to the bottom of a one
hundred and forty foot pond and McPhee is trying to get that through our minds, not really to fix the
issue but to make the facts known to the general public.
John McPhee was good at displaying a point and was successful at getting the audience to act
upon the issue if not at least getting the tire consumers to think and dwell on the tire waste issue and
our role in it. He tells us toward the end of the "Duty of Care", that cement plants in Japan and Germany
use whole tires to fuel about twenty percent of the plant. And the plants can consume up to 200 tires in
an hour. These plants have a bag house and other state of the art equipment that can make the
consumption of tires as environmentally friendly as possible. California has eleven cement plants around
major cities. The eleven plants could use all of the waste tires that Californian's go through in the state
as well as the exiting stockpiles throughout the state but environmentalist are still fighting with the
companies. I'm sure we can all agree that the problem has to be dealt with it just comes down to how
we're all going to do it. John gave some valid insights and information to show and tell us the tire waste
epidemic and now he puts the responsibility on all of us. To make a difference it has to be a joint effort.
This essay really made me think about the environment and how fragile and delicate it is. It also made
me think about the extreme negative effects that we have on the environment. This isn't only a problem
in California, but in most other states as well.