Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines’ Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones. But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just care about one thing—shopping. And that can be a big problem.
“In a way, over -consumption(过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems” Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It’s held on the day, which is known as Black Fridny—a famous shopping day in the US and Canada.
You can see the irony(讽刺)here.
Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever. It’s just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean—seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.
The latest example is the Singles’ Day shopping craze of Nov 1l, which saw a new sales record. But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters. “Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste. ” And it was reported that last year the Singles’ Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins dictionary has also just named “single-use” its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there’re too many things we tow out after only using them once.
So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it’s not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun “with people we care about” rather than wasting money on useless things.
12. What’s the authors purpose of writing the first paragraph?
A.To express the people's love for all festivals. | B.To talk about the meaning of the festivals. |
C.To appreciate the value of the festivals. | D.To bring out the topic of the passage. |
13. Why did Kalle Lasn organize Buy Nothing Day?
A.To help people save money. | B.To cut the cost for daily life. |
C.To prevent over-consumption. | D.To set up a new sales record. |
14. What's Nie Li’s attitude towards the shopping craze?
A.Opposed (反对的). | B.Supportive. | C.Unknown. | D.Neutral(中立的). |
15. What can be a suitable title for the passage?
A.Creating a New Lifestyle | B.Buy Nothing Day |
C.Festivals Around the World | D.A Change in People’s Life |