To find out how many more tons of paper were recycled than plastic in 2010, we can subtract the amount of plastic recycled from the amount of paper recycled.
- Amount of paper recycled: \( 4.6 \times 10^7 \) tons
- Amount of plastic recycled: 2,600,000 tons can be written as \( 2.6 \times 10^6 \) tons.
Now we perform the subtraction:
\[ 4.6 \times 10^7 - 2.6 \times 10^6 \]
To subtract these two numbers, we need them in the same format. We can convert \( 2.6 \times 10^6 \) to have the same exponent as \( 4.6 \times 10^7 \):
\[ 2.6 \times 10^6 = 0.26 \times 10^7 \]
Now, we can subtract:
\[ 4.6 \times 10^7 - 0.26 \times 10^7 = (4.6 - 0.26) \times 10^7 = 4.34 \times 10^7 \]
Thus, the difference is:
\[ 4.34 \times 10^7 \text{ tons} \]
So, \( 4.34 \times 10^7 \) tons more paper was recycled than plastic in 2010. In standard form, this is:
43,400,000 tons.