If you wear contact lenses (隐形眼镜), you might not know the best way to deal with old ones. Washing them down the sink or flushing them down the toilet is not the way to go. Yet one in five people who wear contact lenses do just that. However, the plastic in their lenses can linger (存留), polluting both water and land.
Rolf Halden, an engineer at Arizona State University in Tempe, and his team created an online survey. More than 400 contact lens wearers took part. The questions asked how many got rid of their lenses inappropriately. About 20 percent — one in five — sent their used contact lenses down sink drain or toilet. Assuming all contact lens wearers in the U. S. do that at the same rate, the researchers then calculated how much plastic would be flushed away each year. Their estimate: 6 to 10 metric tons! That's about the weight of two to three adult African forest elephants. Contact lenses are a tiny part of the world's plastic pollution. But the unique plastic used in contact lenses could make them a big concern.
To figure it out, researchers exposed contact lenses to the microbes (微生物) used to clean wastewater in water-treatment plants. These microbes made the plastics begin to fall apart, but they weren't fully broken down. Instead, they created a lot of tiny pieces called microplastics.
Halden worries that these small plastic bits will cause trouble in the food chain. In water, the plastics from contact lenses sink. Animals could view these tiny bits as food. But because the plastic won't provide them with nutrition, this could threaten the health of animals who dined on it.
And that's already happening. Many studies have shown that corals, larval fish and shellfish are mistaking microplastics for food. Over time, they risk accumulating even higher levels of plastic in their bodies. Also the pollution has already shown up in bottled water, sea salt and fish sold for human consumption.
1. Rolf Halden's survey shows that ________.| A．contact lenses have won popularity with Americans |
| B．contact lenses have caused a huge part of plastic pollution |
| C．some contact lens wearers throw away their old lenses improperly |
| D．many contact lens wearers don't wear their lenses in the proper way |
| A．They could be broken down completely. |
| B．They could be processed properly there. |
| C．They couldn't be affected by microbes. |
| D．Some of them became microplastics. |
| A．Tiny pieces are entering oceans. |
| B．Sea creatures are eating microplastics. |
| C．Animals are causing plastic pollution. |
| D．Contact lenses are damaging the environment |
| A．People's eyesight is getting worse and worse. |
| B．Contact lenses must be banned immediately. |
| C．Animals in the sea are lacking in nutrition. |
| D．The impacts microplastic pollution has on human health. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】At the World Economic Forum last month， President Trump drew claps when he announced the United States would respond to the forum's proposal to plant one trillion（万亿）trees jo fight climate change. The trillion tree idea won wide attention last summer after a study published in the journal Science concluded that planting so many trees was "the most effective climate change solution to date".
If only it were true. But it isn't. Planting trees would slow down the planet's warming,but the only thing that will save us and future generations from paying a huge price in dollars，lives and damage to nature is rapid and considerable reductions in carbon release from fossil fuels，to net zero by 2050.
Focusing on trees as the big solution to climate change is a dangerous diversion（偏离）.Worse still，it takes attention away from those responsible for the carbon release that are pushing us toward disaster. For example， in the Netherlands， you can pay Shell Group of Companies an additional 1 euro cent for each liter of regular gasoline you put in your tank to plant trees to balance the carbon release from your driving. That's clearly no more than disaster slightly delayed. The only way to stop this planet from overheating is through political， economic， technological and social solutions that end the use of fossil fuels.
There is no way that planting trees， even across the size of the United States， can absorb the huge amounts of fossil carbon released from industrial societies. Trees do take up carbon from the atmosphere as they grow. But this uptake merely replaces carbon lost when forests were cleared in the first place， usually long ago. Regrowing forests where they once grew can undo some damage done in the past， but even a trillion trees can't store enough carbon to head off dramatic climate changes this century.
In a sharp counter argument to last summer's Paper in Science, Justin Gillis wrote in the same journal in October that the study's findings were inconsistent with the dynamics of the global carbon cycle. He warned that "the claim that global tree restoration is our most effective climate solution is simply scientifically incorrect and dangerously misleading".
1. What do we know about the trillion-tree idea?| A．It was published in a journal. |
| B．It was proposed last summer. |
| C．It was put forward by Trump. |
| D．It drew lots of public attention. |
| A．A drawback of the tree planting strategy. |
| B．An example of balancing carbon release. |
| C．An anecdote of making a purchase at Shell |
| D．A responsibility for politicians and economists. |
| A．Reserved | B．Opposed | C．Hesitant | D．Supportive |
| A．Contradictory Ideas on Tree Planting |
| B．A Trillion Trees Come to the Rescue |
| C．Planting Trees Won't Save the World |
| D．The Best Solution to Climate Change |
【推荐2】About 12 million tons of plastic wastes are entering the oceans every year. This garbage pollutes the water, kills wildlife and breaks down into small pieces that fish and other creatures eat.
Now a group of Spanish fishermen will receive economic support to catch plastics. It is part of a new project. Carlos Martin is one of the fishermen taking part in the project. He and his partners collect the plastic in the ocean and bring it back to land every week. Martin thinks rivers carry a lot of plastics to the sea. He says his most concern is no more than that the plastics often get caught in the nets, which makes nets not work properly. They take on mud（泥）, causing the nets to break because they weigh so much.
Under the new programs, one million pounds will support ocean cleanup efforts for fishermen like Martin. The money is coming from the European Union and the Catalan government. Sergi Tudela, the General Director of Catalonia Fisheries, is responsible for the cleanup project. He said, "We are hopeful that if we are successful in this project, we can apply it to other areas in the Mediterranean（地中海）."
Government reports show that the amount of plastic wastes washing up along the Spanish coastline has grown by 65 percent in just six years. Fishing equipment makes up a large part of the about 8 to 12 million tons of plastics left in the world's oceans every year.
Martin says the fishing community now understands how big the problem is. He says, "In the past we didn't see it that way. We took the plastic garbage and threw it back into the water. I think that after a few year here we have realized the problem. Nothing is thrown into the water; we collect everything and bring it to shore.
1. What worries Martin most about plastic wastes at the beginning?| A．They pollute the sea environment. |
| B．They affect the quality and taste of fish. |
| C．They prevent the fishing nets from working well. |
| D．They kill wildlife and reduce his fishing amount. |
| A．Getting more money to support the project. |
| B．Getting help from other European countries. |
| C．Spreading the cleanup project to more places. |
| D．Praising the European Union for their helping to the oceans. |
| A．Its members do a lot of work for free. |
| B．It has stopped using plastic fishing equipment. |
| C．It has made positive changes to fight plastic wastes. |
| D．Its members find people sill throw the garbage carelessly. |
| A．New programs are changing fishermen's life |
| B．Money is given to Spanish fishermen to clean up oceans |
| C．Traditional fishing equipment causes a lot of plastic wastes |
| D．Spanish fishermen are encouraging people to clean up oceans |
【推荐3】Every child who grows up in a big family needs a little peace sometimes. As a little girl, Nalini Nadkarni discovered one place where she could always find it. She would climb up into the tall trees around her home. There, high in the trees, she made herself a promise. One day, she would become someone who could use her love of trees to help protect them.
As she grew, she became interested in the rainforest. Looking up into the forest trees, Nalini thought there were surely things to be learned in the treetops. She was told, however, that there was nothing important to learn high above her head. Luckily, that didn’t stop her. Instead, she used her rock climbing skills to safely reach the forest treetops. There, she discovered the whole ecosystem. It needed to be studied so scientists could get deeper understanding of the rainforest.
Dr Nadkarni also discovered the importance of canopy soil(树冠层土壤). When mosses(藓)and other plants that live on trees die, they slowly become canopy soil. The soil is nutrient-rich, and the whole ecosystem depends on it. Even the trees themselves take nutrients from canopy soil.
To create greater interest in forest studies, Dr Nadkarni really got creative. In the early 2000s, she bought second hand Barbie dolls and turned them into “forest Barbies”. Finally, Mattel, the company behind Barbie, used Dr Nadkarni’s idea to create dolls to make science interesting to children everywhere. Now, Dr Nadkarni can truly consider her childhood promise well kept.
1. When could Dr Nadkarni find peace as a little girl?| A．When she was in the tall trees. |
| B．When she was in the rainforest. |
| C．When she was doing researches. |
| D．When she was with her family. |
| A．The forest treetops |
| B．A different opinion |
| C．Dr Nadkarni’s bad luck |
| D．The dangers of climbing trees |
| A．To raise money for her research |
| B．To help Mattel reach more children |
| C．To make her childhood dream come true |
| D．To make children more interested in science |
| A．She is a creative scientist. |
| B．She can’t keep her promise. |
| C．She was born into a small family. |
| D．She loved Barbie dolls as a little girl. |
【推荐1】Is New-car Smell Bad for Your Health?
The smell of a new car can be appealing in showrooms, for which there’s a good reason. That new car smell comes from a mixture of chemicals, some of which can be highly poisonous.
“It’s a chemical cocktail made up of lots of poisonous substances,” said Jeff Gearhart, Research Director of the Ecology Center in the US state of Michigan. The Ecology Center has been monitoring and testing chemical levels in the inside of the car for years, and has noted some improvement. But Gearhart says there is still work to be done.
“There are over 200 chemical compounds found in vehicles,” he said. “Since these chemicals are not regulated, consumers have no way of knowing the dangers they face.”
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, continued exposure to some of these can lead to reproductive impacts and damage to some organs and central nervous system—or even cancer.
The danger is the greatest when the car is new, and that new car smell is most noticeable.
It is the release of chemical vapours, which leads to the smell. Heat from a vehicle left in the sun can make matters worse, and speed up the chemical reaction. The danger is reduced over time, and experts say the worst is usually over within about six months.
Experts advise the best thing that buyers can do to limit exposure is to keep the inside of the car well ventilated (通风的), especially during the first six months of ownership. Park in the shade with the windows open when it’s safe to do so, or at least try to air it out before getting inside—especially on hot days.
| A．It’s that long-term exposure that experts find most worrisome. |
| B．Car manufacturers are unaware of standards regulating air quality inside new cars. |
| C．This is when components are still unstable and tend towards what is called off-gassing. |
| D．Just reading a list of the substances is scary enough, and the danger of exposure is scarier still. |
| E．The source of the smell so many buyers find appealing is in the various substances used in car construction. |
| F．Fortunately, high concentrations of these compounds gradually disappear just a few months after manufacture. |
【推荐2】Ohio—Lake Erie, the smallest of North America's five Great Lakes, supplies fresh drinking water to an estimated 11 million people in Ohio, Michigan and southern Ontario province, Canada.
Yet sometimes pollution, bath from industrial waste and farm-chemical run-off, leaves large areas of the lake covered in half-meter-thick layers of green slime. Scientists blame a lot of chemicals entering the water, which has caused pollution.
To find out where these extra nutrients come from, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has been studying data from its network of 14 water-quality monitoring stations installed along the rivers that flow into the Lake Erie basin.
At one point, water from the small stream is diverted into a pipe where it is pumped into the testing station.
We'll have 'a sample a day, year-round every day so that really pins down what the chemistry is like," says Dave Baker of Ohio's Heidelberg University, who takes charge of the monitoring stations for the Department of Natural Resources.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the federal government's pollution watchdog, requires point sources, such as factories, to monitor and report their discharges. So Baker is looking for where the other sources of pollution come from.
"If there are problems in Lake Erie, we want to know where it's coming from and make sure we're putting resources to solve the problem properly," Baker says.
In this case, a primary source of the pollution turns out to be chemical fertilizer that turn off farmland during rainstorms.
Because farmers believe fertilizers are essential to high crop yields, they would like to use them. However, the USDA's Natural Resource Conservation Service isn't asking them to abandon farm chemicals, but rather to use them more sparingly so they don't run off the land when it rains.
Another technique for reducing farm chemical pollution of Lake Erie is cover-crop farming. After the harvest, farmers plant a second quick-growing crop to reduce erosion. The deep-rooted plants, such as rye or turnips, help to cover the soil, allowing worms and fungi to work their magic and helping the soil to absorb more water and nutrients.
1. What is the problem with Lake Erie?| A．There are no fish in it. | B．There is little water in it. |
| C．The water is unfit to drink. | D．It contains a lot of chemicals. |
| A．The water-quality monitoring stations. | B．Natural Resource Conservation Service. |
| C．The Ohio Department of Natural Resources. | D．The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. |
| A．looks through | B．explains exactly | C．keeps a record of | D．shows clearly |
| A．Animal waste from nearby farms. | B．Waste water from a nearby factory. |
| C．Chemical fertilizers from the fields. | D．Pesticide farmers used to kill locusts. |
| A．prevent worms from eating crops | B．increase the harvest of the farmers |
| C．make full use of chemical fertilizers in the soil | D．keep the soil from being washed away |
【推荐3】It was once thought that air pollution affected only the areas immediately around large cities with factories and heavy automobile traffic. Today, we know that although these are the areas with the worst air pollution, the problem is actually worldwide. On several occasions over the past decade, a heavy cloud of air pollution has covered the entire eastern half of the United States and led to health warnings even in rural areas away from any major concentration of manufacturing and automobile traffic. In fact, the very climate of the entire earth may be affected by air pollution. Some scientists feel that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the air resulting from the burning of fossil fuels (coal and oil) is creating “a greenhouse effect”, holding in heat reflected from the earth and raising the world’s average temperature. If this view is correct and the world’s temperature is raised only a few degrees, much of the polar ice cap will melt and cities such as New York, Boston, Miami, and New Orleans will be under water.
Another view, less widely held, is that increasing particulate (废气排到空中而形成的微粒、颗粒) matter in the atmosphere is blocking sunlight and lowering the earth’s temperature—a result that would be equally disastrous. A drop of just a few degrees could create something close to a new ice age and would make agriculture difficult or impossible in many of our top farming areas. At present we do not know for sure that either of these conditions will happen (though one recent government report prepared by experts in the field concluded that the greenhouse effect is very likely). Perhaps, if we are very lucky, the two tendencies will offset each other and the world’s temperature will stay about the same as it is now.
1. As pointed out at the beginning of the passage, people used to think that air pollution ________.| A．caused widespread damage in the countryside |
| B．affected the entire eastern half of the United States |
| C．had damaging effects on health |
| D．existed merely in urban and industrial areas |
| A．shares the same view with the scientists |
| B．is uncertain of its occurrence |
| C．rejects it as being ungrounded |
| D．thinks that it will destroy the world soon |
| A．slip into | B．make up for |
| C．set up | D．catch up with |
| A．lowering the world’s temperature merely a few degrees would lead many major farming areas to disaster |
| B．raising the world’s temperature only a few degrees would not do much harm to life on earth |
| C．almost no temperature variations have occurred over the past decade |
| D．the world’s temperature will remain constant in the years to come |
【推荐1】Montreux, Lake Geneva, Switzerland
After passing away in 1991, Freddie Mercury's body was burned and. his ashes spread around in Lake Geneva. A statue o£ the lead singer of Queen was unveiled(揭幕) on November 25,1996, and overlooked the lake.
Nine Mile, Jamaica
In the village of Nine Mile lies a statue built just feet away from Bob Marley s childhood home, where the Reggae singer was buried after his death in 1981. In 1991, the Jamaican government declared Marley's birthday, February 6, a national holiday, and Nine Mile held an annual music festival in honor of the singer.
Joshua Tree National Park, Joshua Tree, Calif.
Gram Parsons was a regular visitor to Joshua Tree National Park until his death in 1973, and he and his friend Phil Kaufman made an agreement that whoever died first, the survivor would take the other guy's body to Joshua Tree and burn it. This agreement would be the foundation for one of the greatest stories in rock and roll history. Today, there is a Gram Parsons statue in Joshua Tree National Park.
Stone Mountain, Ga.
After one of the most unfortunate deaths in hip hop history, the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation was developed by Tupac's mother in 1997. The foundation began a center for the arts in 2005 as a youth arts training program. Located in Stone Mountain, the center has a peace garden with a statue of the late rapper.
1. Who was buried near where he was born?| A．Freddie Mercury. | B．Gram Parsons. |
| C．Bob Marley. | D．Tupac Amaru Shakur. |
| A．He put up a statue of Parsons in the park. |
| B．He kept the agreement after Parsons, death. |
| C．He started a youth arts training program. |
| D．He drafted an agreement for Gram Parsons. |
| A．The famous national parks around the world. |
| B．The famous singers and their interesting stories. |
| C．The famous places where statues are built there. |
| D．The memorial sites of well-known late musicians. |
【推荐2】Electric vehicles are becoming a real hit. Yet sales of electric vehicles, or EVs, are expected to amount to less than four percent of passenger vehicle sales in the United States in 2021. One reason: the inability to easily recharge on long trips, known as range anxiety.
In July, the Indiana Department of Transportation and Purdue University announced plans to develop the world’s first touchless wireless-charging concrete highway. The project developed by the company Mament will enable wireless charging of electric vehicles as people drive them.
The project will test the electrified road. The most important test will assess the capability of the system to transfer (转移) high-levels of power wirelessly. While the idea is similar to cellphones that charge wirelessly, there is a significant difference: charging with a 10-to-15-inch gap. “The cellphone touches the surface to charge, so it’s pretty strongly coupled (连接),” Nadia Gkritza, a professor at Purdue University said. “Whereas now, if we increase the so-called air gap, the coupling weakens and so does the power transfer.”
A big challenge is clearly on the vehicle side, said Mauricio Esguerra, co-founder of Magment. “The vehicle industry is so busy with making batteries, making software, so that making them deal with inductive (电感应的) charging right now is a priority which is far away. The spirit of this project is to concentrate first on the technical challenges of showing that it works.” On-road charging will also need to “stand all the weight and weather influences. There may be particular applications where on-road charging infrastructure (基础设施) could be targeted to select locations, such as bus stops,” he said.
The Purdue team is mindful of these challenges, but optimistic. There are, however, legal barriers, Ms Gkritza said, “For example, in Indiana, if you’re not a utility (公共事业),” you cannot resell electricity. So, if you’re the roadway operator, you cannot charge the vehicles for the electricity they consume. Also, there are difficulties in using the interstate right of way right now to build this infrastructure. There are certain laws that need changing before this becomes a reality.”
1. Why did the author mention cellphone charging?| A．To stress the difficulty of on-road charging. |
| B．To introduce wireless charging technology. |
| C．To show the necessity of transferring power. |
| D．To explain the benefits of increasing the air gap. |
| A．It should be used on buses first. |
| B．It fails to stand weather influences. |
| C．It is in need of more financial support. |
| D．It’s an early-stage technology for the car industry. |
| A．Roadway conditions. | B．Electricity shortage |
| C．Government rules. | D．Location selection. |
| A．Could EVs rule? |
| B．Could roads recharge cars? |
| C．Could cars be more eco-friendly? |
| D．Could technology make car design easier? |
【推荐3】“There’s no place like home.” This English saying has much truth in it: the best place to be is surrounded by our treasured possessions and our loved ones and with a roof over our head. And for many young adults, it’s the only affordable place to stay; some place where they can receive first- class service from mum and dad. But this comes at a price!
In some countries, it’s quite traditional for people in their late teens and early 20s to live at home with their parents, but in other places, flying away the nest to start their own independent life is very desirable. But there’s been a growing trend, in the UK at least, for young people to return home to live —or not to leave home at all.
According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, about a quarter of young adults aged 20-34 live at home, and that figure has been growing. A survey by a price comparison website found that 18% of adult children in the UK said they were moving back home because of debt, compared with 8% last year. More young people had lost their jobs, and others couldn't afford their rent compared with the previous year. So, it’s easy to see why they’re increasingly becoming home birds.
The BBC’s Lucy Hooker explains that many returning adult children enjoy home comforts. These include cooked meals, a full fridge and cleaning, as well as their bills being covered by what is commonly called “the hotel of mum and dad”. But for the “hoteliers”, that’s mum and dad, the survey found the average cost to them has gone up sharply, and that they are sacrificing luxuries and holidays to look after their “big kids”. Emma Craig from Moneysupermarket says “they’re trying to look after their children more. If your child comes home and you see them struggling financially, you feel more awkward asking them for rent or lo contribute.
With parents splashing out（花费）around ￡l,886 on takeaway food, buying new furniture and upgrading their Wi-Fi for the benefit of their children, it’s easy for the returning children to put their feet up and make themselves at home. That's before they learn a home truth that one day it might be their own kids who'll be checking into the hotel of mum and dad!
1. Which of the following statements is true according to the text?| A．The main reason for their moving back home lies in parents' service. |
| B．Different countries have different traditions. |
| C．More and more young people live with parents in the UK. |
| D．Young people desire to live independently in all countries. |
| A．They are struggling financially. |
| B．They want to keep their parents company. |
| C．They can't afford to buy their own house. |
| D．They want to enjoy home comforts |
| A．They have difficulty making ends meet. |
| B．They feel happy with their children around. |
| C．They feel awkward asking their children for rent. |
| D．They give up their own life to take care of their kids. |
| A．A new trend in the UK. |
| B．The hotel of mum and dad. |
| C．There’s no place like home. |
| D．Everything comes at a price. |
【推荐1】Chinese scientists recently have produced two monkeys with the same gene, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, using the same technique that gave us Dolly the sheep. These monkeys are not actually the first primates（灵长类）to be cloned. Another one named Tetra was produced in the late 1990s by embryo（胚胎）splitting, the division of an early-stage embryo into two or four separate cells to make clones. By contrast, they were each made by replacing an egg cell nucleus（原子核）with DNA from a differentiated body cell. This Dolly method, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer（SCNT）, can create more clones and allows researchers greater control over the edits they make to the DNA.
Success came from adopting several new techniques. These included a new type of microscopy to better view the cells during handling or using several materials that encourage cell reprogramming, which hadn’t been tried before on primates. Still, the research process proved difficult, and many attempts by the team failed. Just two healthy baby monkeys born from more than 60 tested mothers. This leads to many researchers’ pouring water on the idea that the team’s results bring scientists closer to cloning humans. They thought this work is not a stepping stone to establishing methods for obtaining live born human clones. Instead, this clearly remains a very foolish thing to attempt, it would be far too inefficient, far too unsafe, and it is also pointless.
But the scientists involved emphasize that this is not their goal. There is now no barrier for cloning primate species, thus cloning humans is closer to reality. However, their research purpose is entirely for producing non-human primate models for human diseases; they absolutely have no intention, and society will not permit this work to be extended to humans. Despite limitations, they treat this breakthrough a novel model system for scientists studying human biology and disease.
1. What do we know about the technology called SCNT?| A．It created the first two primates. |
| B．It may contribute to editing the DNA. |
| C．It can divide an early-stage embryo into several cells. |
| D．It produced two cloned monkeys with different genes. |
| A．Keeping a hot topic of it. |
| B．Attaching no importance to it. |
| C．Having a low opinion of it. |
| D．Adding supportive evidence to it. |
| A．To prepare for their research on human cloning. |
| B．To serve as a stepping stone to their reputation. |
| C．To help with the study of human diseases. |
| D．To raise money for holding an exhibition of novels. |
| A．Cloning humans is already on its way. |
| B．New techniques seem to be pointless. |
| C．Society won’t agree to clone another monkey. |
| D．The success rate of cloning a monkey was not high. |
【推荐2】So many of us hold on to little resentments (怨恨) that may have come from an argument, a misunderstanding, or some other painful event. Stubbornly, we wait for someone else to reach out to us—believing this is the only way we can forgive or rekindle a friendship or family relationship.
An acquaintance of mine, whose health isn’t very good, recently told me that she hadn’t spoken to her son in almost three years. She said that she and her son had had a disagreement about his wife and that she wouldn’t speak to him again unless he called first. When I suggested that she be the one to reach out, she resisted initially and said, “I can’t do that. He’s the one who should apologize.” She was literally willing to die before reaching out to her only son. After a little gentle encouragement, however, she did decide to be the first one to reach out. To her amazement, her son was grateful for her willingness to call and offered an apology of his own. As is usually the case when someone takes the chance and reaches out, everyone wins.
Whenever we hold on to our anger, we turn “small stuff” into really “big stuff” in our minds. We start to believe that our positions are more important than our happiness. They are not. If you want to be a more peaceful person, you must understand that being right is almost never more important than allowing yourself to be happy. The way to be happy is to let go, and reach out. Let other people be right. This doesn’t mean that you’re wrong. Everything will be fine. You’ll experience the peace of letting go, as well as the joy of letting others be right.
You’ll also notice that, as you reach out and let others be “right,” they will become less defensive and more loving toward you. They might even reach back. But if for some reason they don’t, that’s okay too. You’ll have the inner satisfaction of knowing that you have done your part to create a more loving world, and certainly you’ll be more peaceful yourself.
1. The underlined word “rekindle” in Paragraph 1 probably means “________”.| A．develop | B．recover |
| C．accept | D．replace |
| A．she had got an argument with her husband |
| B．she had disagreed about her son’s marriage |
| C．she had got an argument about her daughter-in-law |
| D．she had disliked her son’s wife for many years |
| A．People believe that they are right. |
| B．People always wait for others to offer an apology first. |
| C．People consider the position more important than happiness. |
| D．People want to get an inner satisfaction. |
| A．instruct the readers how to apologize |
| B．teach the readers how to gain inner peace |
| C．tell the readers to reach out first when there are painful events |
| D．inform the readers the importance of being forgiving |
【推荐3】We’re drowning in plastic. If you want to reduce your own contribution to the plastic pollution problem, recycling might seem like an easy solution.
But what happens after you clean out those plastic containers and pour them into a recycling bin? Unfortunately, the outcome isn’t as rosy as many people think; recycling is unlikely to give plastic to-go containers new life. “Of all the waste produced in 2017, only 8.4% of it eventually got recycled. It’s not that consumers aren’t motivated to recycle or that they don’t have ready access to recycling programs; the United States simply doesn’t have the proper facilities (设施),” said John Hocevar, a marine biologist with Greenpeace USA.
A recent report surveyed the United States’ 367 materials recovery facilities—the facilities that sort our recycling—and found only plastic bottles were regularly recycled. The fate of most other types of plastic such as packaging usually ends up being buried or burnt.
Not all plastic is created equal. If you turn over a transparent plastic bottle, like those used to hold water, you’ll notice a number “1” inside a triangular recycling symbol. Non-transparent jugs, like the kind that hold milk, get a “2”. At materials recovery facilities, or MRF’s, plastics get sorted based on these numbers, which indicate how recyclable they are.
Numbers 1 and 2 are relatively recyclable. Recycling gets more difficult with higher numbers, called “mixed plastic”. This waste makes up around 69% of all the plastic we use. It’s much more expensive to process than numbers 1 and 2.
So what the United States needs is facilities equipped to process other kinds of plastic. But Hocevar came up with a different solution: “The really simple answer is that we have to stop making so much throwaway plastic.”
That said, is recycling worth it? For bottles labeled (贴标签) “1” or “2”, the answer is “yes”. There’s also a growing market for plastics labeled “5”. For other numbers, Hocevar’s answer was simple: a resounding (响亮的) “no” on numbers 3, 4, 6 and 7.
1. Which problem is the USA facing according to the text?| A．People don’t know the best way to recycle. |
| B．Ready recycling programs are not accessible. |
| C．People lack awareness about plastic recycling. |
| D．There isn’t suitable equipment for plastic recycling. |
| A．Productive. | B．Promising. |
| C．Unsatisfying. | D．Controversial. |
| A．Whether it is easy to recycle them. |
| B．The recycling technology they need. |
| C．They places where they were produced. |
| D．Which dustbin we should put them into. |
| A．Give up the use of plastic. |
| B．Develop more cheaper facilities. |
| C．Only recycle plastics labeled 1 to 5. |
| D．Reduce the production of mixed plastic. |
