To find out how many more tons of paper were recycled than plastic in 2010, you need to subtract the amount of plastic recycled from the amount of paper recycled.
- The amount of paper recycled is approximately \(4.6 \times 10^7\) tons.
- The amount of plastic recycled is 2,600,000 tons, which can be converted to scientific notation as \(2.6 \times 10^6\) tons.
Now, perform the subtraction:
\[ 4.6 \times 10^7 - 2.6 \times 10^6 \]
To subtract these, we can express them with the same exponent:
Convert \(2.6 \times 10^6\) to have the same exponent as \(4.6 \times 10^7\):
\[ 2.6 \times 10^6 = 0.026 \times 10^7 \]
Now, we can rewrite the subtraction:
\[ 4.6 \times 10^7 - 0.026 \times 10^7 = (4.6 - 0.026) \times 10^7 = 4.574 \times 10^7 \]
So, the difference is \(4.574 \times 10^7\).
The options provided do not match this result exactly:
- \(7.20 \times 10^7\)
- \(434 \times 10^7\)
- \(4.34 \times 10^7\)
- \(4.34 \times 10^2\)
It seems that there might be a discrepancy in calculating or interpreting the options. Based on the calculations above, approximately \(4.57 \times 10^7\) tons of paper was recycled more than plastic in 2010, but given the options provided, the closest match is:
4.34×10^7 (assuming the "more" from the question might have led to an approximation or rounding).