1 . The waste management park at Water Beach in Cambridge-shire handles 400,000 tons of recycling every year.
Fran Hawes is standing on the edge of a mountain of dry recycling. She says, “Some think it’s a discouraging thing, but for me personally, it is a huge responsibility.” Fran, who started to do the job at the age of 26, takes her job very seriously. “I am that annoying person at a party who will get everyone’s recycling and make sure everything goes in the right bin,” she admits. “That’s my job. That’s my mission. That’s what I need to do. It allows me to find my leadership style.”
Bin loader Richard Hughes and his colleagues clock on at the waste service garage in Peter-borough at 6:30 and are out emptying bins within half an hour. Richard works four 12-hour days and admits the pay and the condition are not great—but there are three days off which he can spare to his partner and children. His colleague Crystal Teal has been working as a bin loader for two and a half months. “I didn’t feel my last job gave me self-worth and general happiness, so I decided to change and do something completely different,” she says. “I decided to be a binman. It doesn’t bother me that men are mainly doing it,” Crystal adds. “It can be smelly some days, but go home and have a shower, you’ll be all right.”
“When householders put the wrong material in the recycling bins, it makes me feel angry that they are just putting it out there. We’re doing our job to serve them. We are providing service to take their rubbish away and they can’t do their part to put the right things in,” said Richard.
“Any problem has a solution—therefore I’m not afraid of a pile of waste,” Fran says. “To any normal person, this might be intimidating (令人生畏的). It’s a challenge. But this will be gone by Monday morning.”
1. Why does Fran Hawes make others annoyed at a party?| A．She asks everyone to be responsible for their jobs. | B．She still performs her task of waste sorting. |
| C．She hosts the party in a leadership way. | D．She might be smelly at parties. |
| A．She needed a well-paid job. | B．She preferred the three-day-off holiday. |
| C．It’s meaningful for her to do the job. | D．All the colleagues were friendly to her. |
| A．People didn’t take out their rubbish. | B．People threw away rubbish everywhere. |
| C．People didn’t sort their rubbish out rightly. | D．People picked out useful things from the bins. |
| A．Honest and determined. | B．Humorous and confident. |
| C．Sensitive and talented. | D．Responsible and optimistic. |
2 . If the three Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle) is a guideline to save the planet, garbage-sorting is where the efforts start. Since May 1, Beijing has started to carry out mandatory garbage-sorting in new efforts to better protect the environment. Under the new regulation, residents are required to classify household waste into four categories: kitchen, recyclable, hazardous and other waste. People who fail to sort their garbage properly can be fined from 50 to 200 yuan, reported Xinhua.
Some residential communities in Beijing have introduced rewards to encourage residents to sort their garbage. According to Xinhua, residents can earn points by classifying their domestic waste correctly and then exchange the points they accumulate for daily necessities such as soap.
Garbage sorting practices have reached over 70 percent of housing estates in 18 cities, including Shanghai, Xiamen and Hangzhou, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. Shanghai first enacted a mandatory garbage-sorting regulation in July 2019 and has had a 90 percent compliance (服从) rate among its housing estates.
According to a report by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, over 90 percent of the public believe that garbage-sorting is important for the protection of the environment. However, garbage-sorting is still a big problem in China. Only 30 percent of participants said they think they are completely sorting their waste, the report noted. According to Xinhua, it’s partly because many people lack the willingness to sort their own waste. Also, some previous garbage regulations didn’t include fines for people who failed to obey them.
“It’s a must to have a legal guarantee to promote garbage sorting,” Liu Jianguo, a professor from Tsinghua University, told China Daily, “Aside from China, many countries like Germany, Spain and Britain, also ask people to sort waste into specific categories. In Japan, there is a fixed time for the sorting of each kind of garbage and littering.”
1. What can we learn about the new regulation in Beijing?| A．It hasn’t been put into use yet. |
| B．Residents can sort the garbage as they like. |
| C．People can get money if they classify their domestic waste correctly. |
| D．Those who can’t sort the garbage as the new rule requires shall be fined. |
| A．Most people are unaware of its importance in protecting environment. |
| B．Some people don’t want to take the trouble to sort the garbage. |
| C．Only residents in big cities can sort the trash correctly. |
| D．The government doesn’t have enough money to support garbage sorting. |
| A．It’s difficult to carry out garbage sorting in China. |
| B．Some laws in garbage-sorting are needed. |
| C．People in developed countries can better sort the garbage. |
| D．We should learn from Japan. |
| A．Garbage sorting, a new start in China | B．New regulations in Beijing |
| C．Argument on garbage sorting | D．How to sort domestic garbage |
