Question

Read the following sentence and answer the question that follows. The recycling program in Marionville takes bundled newspapers, crushed aluminum cans, __________, and mixed paper and cardboard. Which phrase best completes the sentence above?
A- glass and plastic bottles
B-bottles of plastic or glass
c-bottles that are either glass or plastic
d- glass bottles and plastic bottles

Answer 1

The correct answer is A-glass and plastic bottles. To explain this answer it's important to keep in mind how adjectives work in a sentence. Adjectives in English are always before a noun and, in this specific case, they are describing the physical properties of the bottles. When we have two adjectives the rules say that they must contain the word And place between the two adjectives.

Then we have that the option A "glass and plastic" is correct as it follows both rules, it contains the word and between the adjectives and they go before the noun bottle. This is the same of the examples below in the excerpt "bundled newspapers" "crushed aluminum cans" and "mixed paper and cardboard". Then we have newspapers, cans and paper/cardboard as the nouns in the sentence that go at the final and we have adjectives as physical properties that go at the beginning of the sentence. The option B is incorrect because the noun is at the beginning, the option C is incorrect because we don't know if it's just one material or the other that is being recycled. You can recycle both materials plastic and glass. And finally, it's not the option D because when we have two adjectives they go together in the sentence as "glass and plastic" not "glass bottles and plastic bottles".

Answer 2

The correct option is A) “glass and plastic bottles” since it keeps the parallelism of the sentence. The author is listing the material taken by the recycling program and uses the structure  Adjective+Noun as in: “crushed aluminum cans” and “mixed paper” so in order to follow the same pattern the phrase “glass and plastic bottles” is the correct one.