Petro, 1

Jack Petro
Ms. Victoria Hamby
UWRT 1101-019
17 November, 2014
Genre Analysis
For the Genre assignment my group and I created three texts of different genres to
encourage and promote recycling. Recycling is perceived by many to be an underutilized public
good. The Federal Environment Protection Agency estimates that of the 75% of solid waste that
is recyclable, only about 30% actually is. Thus a great deal of community activism and political
lobbying is focused toward encouraging more recycling. Because such activism is naturally
targeted to many different audiences, it is an easy topic through which to demonstrate the uses of
different genres conveying a common message. The genre of each text was chosen with its target
audience in mind. In requesting donations, we composed an email that would be sent to known
supporters of our fictitious environmental activist group. When soliciting for government action,
we composed a letter that might be sent to a elected official or bureaucrat. For encouraging
participation in recycling, we made a simple flyer that we intended to be directed towards
students of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. By selecting these particular genres for
these particular groups we will have maximized the success of our environmental initiative.

Asking for money is a tricky proposition. Many organizations go about asking for money
all the time, making it so that any person who we are likely to solicit a donation from has likely
heard a lot of other 'give me money' pitches before ours. For this reason, we made sure our target

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audience was one that would be likely to support us, in this case known environmentalist
supporters or sympathizers. We also ensured that the genre we used to communicate our aims to
them, in this case an email, would be able to get into contact with as many people as possible,
thus ensuring more favorable responses while not wasting money on advertising expenses. Like
most emails, ours is short, containing about 200 words. Because of an emails characteristic
brevity we have to make sure that our email contains sufficient encouragement to get a donation
from the reader while still being concise enough that the recipient reads it through before
marking it as spam. In choosing our salutation for the email we decided to begin with Dear
Dedicated Preservationist. If the reader is likely to have any predisposed favor to environmental
activism then this form of address should get their attention. Rather than immediately delve into
the part of the remain were we ask for money, we champion to the reader a prior success of our
group. In this case we announce the opening of a recycling plant in a fictitious town and
celebrate it as A great victory for the environment, our children, and our planet. In beginning
our text on such a positive note, we hope to begin to precondition the reader into a positive mood
towards recycling before they reach the part were we ask for the opening of their pocket book.
We also hope to underscore the importance of our organization in stating who/what it benefits;
the environment, your children, and the pretty blue-green Earth. Also presented is an example of
the successes of our particular organization's lobbying efforts, which we attribute to the
unending generosity of the community. By doing so we present our organization as one that
can achieve hard results with your charitable donations, rather than being a money eating black
hole into which funds disappear, never to come of any good use. This is one of the great concerns
people usually have before donating their money to a organization. Starting in the next paragraph

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we explain our new initiative for which we desire their money. We describe a program of
community education and outreach, primarily directed toward college students, encouraging
them to recycle. We present this as a logical next step in our efforts, so that our new
aforementioned recycling plant finds itself busy creating jobs, making industrial resources, and
saving the planet. Only when we arrive at the end do we ask for their continuing encouragement
and (most importantly) financial support. Our final sentence praises the reader as a forward
thinking conservationists, willing to help preserve our beautiful planet for ourselves and our
posterity. This email will likely be an effective tool for generating funds. While on an individual
level any email asking for donations is unlikely to receive any such action, we have to consider
that this email could easily be directed to many thousands of people. With even a modest
response, say a one five-dollar donation for every one hundred emails sent, we could quickly
accumulate necessary funds if this email found its way to tens or hundreds of thousands of email
accounts, not an unrealistic proposition given how frequently individuals give out their email
account to parties who would sell the information.

Our second text is a flyer directed to students at UNCC. Following the natural
conventions of a flyer, our flyer is very simple, containing a large image of four recycling bins
with their recyclable contents named on them; paper, glass, plastic, and metal. This flyer
completes two very simple functions that would be necessary to get passersbys to recycle
whatever recyclable thing happens to be in their hand at the moment. First it reminds them about
recycling. Most people know about recycling, have read awareness ads or heard talks about it
before, and generally have a good predisposition to it. Therefore it isn't necessary to give a

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lengthy explanation for why the reader ought to recycle, it is merely sufficient to serve as a
reminder for the reader to act on a behavior we expect they have already been encouraged to do.
The second function of our flyer is educational. By listing the things that ought to be recycled we
immediately inform the reader as to whether or not what they have in their hand is recyclable.
Because of a flyers characteristic brevity and use of an imagery we can convey a message to the
reader in an instant. This flyer would likely be best placed in campus cafeterias, cafes, and
restaurants, as well as in sitting rooms, garbage bins, and near vending machines. Anywhere
where one is likely to have recyclable trash that they are disposing of or will dispose of shortly.
Flyers are easily and cheaply printed and distributing them in large volumes requires little effort.
If placed near appropriate trash receptacles, these flyers would have great success in reminding
more people to recycle.

In writing an elected official or bureaucrat we wished to have a more formal tone so we

wrote a letter. Like with our email to conservationists, we are trying to solicit support for our
environmental activism, in this case by soliciting the use of government resources to increase the
availability of recycling bins at UNCC. Though letters are structurally similar to email, following
many of the same genre conventions such as a salutation and signature, they cannot be used
interchangeably. An email lends itself more easily to mass communication because of its
cheapness and pure efficiency but it is too easily and commonly discarded on a case by case
basis. This is no problem when we are sending emails to thousands of people but when trying to
appeal to a particular individual a letter is more likely to be opened and considered. Because
elected official receive many petitions our letter is brief and to the point. Following a brief

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salutation we address our desire, in this case recycling bins in more locations on the university
campus and why we think its necessary, to promote environmental responsibility and achieve
public good. Though the genre of a letter is an effective way to reach a government official, I
fear our particular text is unlikely to have much success. The letter is so brief that it makes little
attempt to be persuasive and asks for the wrong kind of action from the government official. If
the letter's goal were to petition an increase in the availability of recycling in a municipality,
county, state, or even in the whole nation, then it might useful request action from a government
official. However we are requesting for more recycling bins on our university's campus. It would
therefore be more appropriate to contact someone like Associate Vice Chancellor Phil Jones, who
is in charge of facilities management at UNCC. No elected official is likely to have much
personal authority over waste disposal at UNCC. Wrong audience for this particular letter.

Our recycling initiative has great potential to meet with success. Emails directed toward a
large enough audience is likely to raise sufficient money for our organization. With email being
such an efficient way to communicate with large numbers of people we are very likely to acquire
needed funds. At the very least its cheapness means we are unlikely to lose anything in our fund
raising efforts. A successful email campaign would ensure adequate funding for the production
and distribution of our flyers. By far the flyers are the most important of our texts and the most
likely to achieve our aim, that is getting people to recycle. With good placement and its easily
understood message one of these flyers may ensure the proper disposal of hundreds of cans and
bottles over the course of a few weeks. The letter, in its current form, is unlikely to do much to
aid our recycling initiative. A quick revision with the addition of a persuasive paragraph and

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changing its target audience from a 'government official' to a certain Associate Vice Chancellor
in charge of Facilities Management would do much to aid our efforts. By increasing the
availability of recycling bins on campus in conjunction with a simple but widespread flyer
advertising campaign we would do much to ensure that UNCC wastes less.

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Work Cited
"Environment."Opensecrets RSS. Center for Responsive Politics, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 23 Nov.
2014.
"Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and
Figures for 2012." (n.d.): n. pag.www.epa.gov. Environmental Protection Agency. Web.
23 Nov. 2014.