2 . The Green Planet, a new documentary series (系列纪录片), gives us a new look at plants and shows the secret lives of plants.

Plants compete against each other to live. Each species has its own ways of defense. In tropical rainforests, different kinds of plants race for sunlight. The forest floor is described as a “battlefield” in the series as only two percent of the sunlight filters (过滤，渗入) through it. Some plants like Monstera (龟背竹属植物) spread their big leaves to reach light. But they are caught up in a vine (藤本植物) that tries to hitch a ride. Finally, they are both overtaken by a fast-growing balsa (轻木) tree. As the balsa has slippery hairs on its leaves, the vine can’t get a hold. Similarly, some trees make poisonous sap (毒汁) to protect themselves.

Plants also help each other and even communicate. In deserts, the roots of Euphrates poplar (胡杨) are connected. If a tree finds water, it will share it with others through the roots. Studies also show that plants use fungus (真菌，霉菌) in the soil as a way to “talk” to each other. It’s kind of like how Wi-Fi works. If a tomato plant gets a leaf disease, it can tell nearby plants about it.

The series not only makes us surprised at the plant world but pushes us to understand that plants are important.

4 . We all know there is a problem with plastic pollution. Five trillion plastic bags are used every year. One million plastic drinking bottles are bought every minute.

What if we could use plastic waste to build roads? This is exactly what Toby McCartney has done.

In 2019, McCartney’s UK-based company, MacRebur, built the world’s first plastic road in Elgin town, Scotland. The plastic waste was made into grains and then mixed with biturnen (沥青). The road looks just like any other road. But it has improved strength and is more stretchy (有弹性的) thanks to the plastic.

“Our technology can not only help solve the problem of plastic waste but also produce roads that deal better with changes in the weather, reducing cracks and holes on the roads,” McCartney told the BBC.

McCartney’s idea came from a trip to India. “I saw people in India would put plastic waste into the holes on the roads and burn it. The plastic would melt down and cover the hole,” said McCartney.

“I knew that there must be some similarities between the plastic and biturnen, which both come from oil. That’s how I started to think about mixing them,” he said.

After lots of testing, McCartney found the perfect recipe. And now his company has built many plastic roads around the world, from Australia to Europe. A one-kilometer stretch of roads uses about 684,000 plastic bottles or 1.8 million plastic bags. The road itself can be recycled at the end of its lifetime. The materials can be reused to build new roads.

“We’re just a small part of ending the plastic problems, but it’s nice to be part of it,” McCartney said. “I just don’t want my daughters to live in a world where there are more plastics in our oceans than fish.”

5 . If you go shopping in any toy store, you can see clearly the different games and toys for boys and girls——there are a lot of pink toys on one side of the store for girls and dark-colored cars, guns, and soldiers for boys. Some big stores with toys may even have a pink floor for girls and a blue floor for boys. In fact, if you want to buy a toy for a girl that is not pink, it’s not easy.

Some people think that too much pink is bad for girls. Sue Palmer, writer of Toxic Childhood, is very worried that most girls over the age of three are captivated about the pink. They’d like to just choose that color all the time. According to some scientists, this happens for two reasons. Firstly, most companies offer too many products in pink. Also, many parents think their little daughter looks cute in pink. Sue Palmer says that girls at this age cannot make proper decisions by themselves, but the pink can affect the choices and the decisions they will make in the future.

Some parents are worried, too, for example, Vanessa Holburn, thirty-two, who has two girls under the age of four. Their bedrooms are a sea of pink and Vanessa is not happy. “Pink says that you are soft and gentle. Blue says that you are strong and powerful. I want my daughters to be strong and powerful. I’m worried that pink will not help them with that,” she says.

But not everyone thinks there’s something wrong with pink. Grayson Turner is a father of three girls and he isn’t worried at all. “People forget that things change all the time,” he says. “My girls used to love pink when they were little, but as they get older, they change.” Turner explains that his twelve-year-old daughter never wears pink clothes anymore. “This love of pink is just a fashion and all fashions change,” he adds. “It’s only since the 1940s that people have stated dressing girls—in pink before that it was a color for boys.”

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9 . Think of some great minds you like. You will probably find that their success didn’t come easily. As “Father of Hybrid Rice（杂交水稻）”, Yuan Longping got over great difficulties and spent his whole life working to increase rice production and helping to feed the country with the largest population.

Wu Mengchao, the “Father of Chinese Hepatobiliary Surgery（肝胆外科）”, focused on saving people’s lives for nearly eighty years. He did more than 16, 000 operations during his life. Holding the surgeon’s knife for such a long time deformed his fingers but he still kept doing operations. Wu once said, “It would be my greatest happiness if I could work at the operating table until the last moment of my life.”

In 1969, in order to solve the problem of treating malaria（疟疾）, Tu Youyou, worked as head of a research team. They did different kinds of experiments. However, the results were not satisfactory. Instead of giving up, they kept trying. Finally, in 1972, they made it! In 2015, at the age of 85, she received the Nobel Prize.

Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb believed that every failure was a step towards success. He once said, “If I find 10, 000 ways that won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong try is another step forward.”

Sometimes, their success was a surprise, even to themselves, even after a long time of their hard work. The famous scientist Alexander Fleming said, “When l woke up just after daybreak on 28th September, 1928, I just began another busy day with my research as I did many days and nights before. And I certainly didn’t plan to make a great difference to all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic（抗生素）. But I guess that was exactly what I did.”

Some people only became successful after their deaths. The artist Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting all through his life and that was to a friend. But he kept painting and he painted more than 2000 artworks in the following ten years. Now his paintings are very popular and they sell for millions of pounds.

One thing all these people have in common is that they never give up and stick to their goals no matter what happens.

10 . Garbage or trash is a major kind of environmental pollution. Each person produces about 2kg of trash a day. We are making waste products faster than nature can break them down. And we are using up resources faster than they can be replaced.

This adds up to trouble for the environment. Where does all that garbage go? What can be done to help dispose of(处理) garbage? How can we make less garbage?

Garbage isn’t just the smelly rotting fruits, vegetables or meat that we throw away in our homes. Those are only a small part of all the stuff we throw away. We create other kinds of waste in construction, mining and in our factories.

Did you ever wonder what happens to your garbage? Most is burned or buried in landfills(垃圾填埋场). Less than a quarter of our waste is recycled.

With a population of 1.3 billion, garbage is a big problem for China. Chinese cities create around 148 million tons of garbage every year. The amount is growing at around 10 percent each year.

Once we used about 3 billion plastic shopping bags every day in China. The result was a great waste of resources and serious pollution. So we did something about that. Now we use more cloth bags and shopping baskets when we shop.

In the coming years China will build waste-to-energy plants in cities to clean up the garbage. But there’s a lot more that needs to be done. And you can play a part.