1 . Recycling is good for our planet, but it can be confusing. Can I recycle plastic bags? What about pizza cartons? Toothpaste tubes? Which bin should I use? There are so many questions, and more than half of Americans are unsure about how to recycle.
Know what to put in the recycling bin. Keep it simple and focus on the most commonly recycled items, such as paper, glass, aluminum and plastic.
Wash or clean items. Do a quick clean to make sure there is no food left in containers before you put them in the bin.
Don’t bag it. Unless you live in a place that requires it, like New York City, keep the recyclables lost in the bin. “A lot of the time, it’s not safe for our employees to tear those bags open, or it takes too much time,” said Keller. “
| A．Know what is not recyclable. |
| B．The answers are not hard to find. |
| C．A lot of bagged stuff goes right to the landfill. |
| D．Plastic bags can be used again or returned to grocery stores. |
| E．If you really don’t know if an item is recyclable, then just throw it in the garbage. |
| F．This is really important if you only use one bin because food items could ruin paper. |
| G．Hard plastics like water and soft drink bottles or anything like these can be recycled. |
2 . Garbage sorting (分类) has become a hot topic around China, especially after Shanghai began carrying out a regulation (规章) on July 1.
Beijing has been expected to do the same. At present the regulation gives garbage sorting responsibilities to government departments, property management groups and other organizations. It also gives rules for companies, explaining how they’re responsible for waste collection, transportation and treatment. Citizens are free of responsibilities for the moment.
The long-awaited revision will soon change the situation. “Taking out the trash without sorting it properly will be illegal,” said Sun Xinjun, director of the Beijing Commission of Urban Management. In Shanghai, violators (违背者) are now fined up to 200 yuan for trash-sorting violations. “The maximum fine in Beijing will not be less than that,” he said.
The Beijing city government first promoted garbage sorting in 2009. Authorities have since called on citizens to sort their household waste into four types—recyclable waste, kitchen trash, dangerous waste and others , and leave it in a colored dustbin or trash can. Blue-colored dustbins are for recyclable items, green for kitchen trash, red for dangerous materials and grey for other waste.
To promote the awareness of garbage sorting and expand the base of participants, authorities have employed workers to help citizens. With intelligent devices, those who throw in recyclable waste at given places will be rewarded with bonus points, which can be used to buy daily goods. At some communities, there are no color-coded dustbins. Instead, a scheduled garbage collection service is offered to help improve the environment. In other communities, workers offer a door-to-door service to collect recyclable or kitchen waste.
Beijing Environmental Sanitation Engineering Group has been promoting new garbage sorting facilities such as recycling cabinets and smart kitchen waste trash cans since 2016, Xinhua News Agency reported.
1. Which of the following shouldn’t be thrown into a blue dustbin?| A．Coke cans. | B．Thrown-away batteries. |
| C．Used books. | D．Broken iron pots. |
| A．citizens are not responsible for garbage sorting in Beijing now |
| B．recyclable waste like newspapers should be thrown in green dustbins. |
| C．people sorting recyclable waste will be rewarded in Beijing |
| D．Shanghai carried out garbage sorting later than Beijing |
| A．An Example in Garbage Sorting in Shanghai |
| B．Action to Be Taken to Sort Garbage in Shanghai |
| C．New Garbage Sorting Regulation in Beijing |
| D．Present Garbage Collection in Beijing |
| A．A fashion magazine. | B．A science book. |
| C．A newspaper. | D．A government report. |
3 . 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. |
4 . Open an app at your smart phone and scan the code bar (二维码) on the garbage can. When you throw garbage into the garbage can, it will show the weight of the garbage and the points you can get from doing so.
In some cities, a variety of multifunctional smart garbage cans are being put into use. In Beijing, for example, a smart garbage can is equipped with an LED screen, which not only shows national policies on garbage classification but also shows the correct steps for garbage sorting. It can also calculate the weight of the garbage and the accumulated points one can get. They can be traded for some articles of daily use.
Garbage disposal is a small issue that involves everybody each day. However, it is also a big issue.
| A．The good habit of garbage classification can improve the living environment. |
| B．Over 200 million tons of garbage is produced each year in some cities. |
| C．It will affect China’s transformation towards green development. |
| D．Such a way of handling garbage has appeared in some cities. |
| E．It is no wonder that residents cheered for their presence. |
| F．Another kind of garbage can is even smarter. |
| G．Garbage sorting has been a new fashion. |
5 . Open an app at your smart phone and scan the code bar on the garbage can. When you throw garbage into the garbage can, it will show the weight of the garbage and the points you can get from doing so.
In some cities, a variety of multifunctional smart garbage cans are being put into use. In Beijing, for example, a smart garbage can is equipped with an LED screen, which not only shows national policies on garbage classification but also shows the correct steps for garbage sorting. It can also calculate the weight of the garbage and the accumulated points one can get. They can be traded for some articles of daily use.
Garbage disposal is a small issue that involves everybody each day. However, it is also a big issue.
| A．Garbage sorting has been a new fashion. |
| B．Another kind of garbage can is even smarter. |
| C．It is no wonder that residents cheered for their presence. |
| D．Such a way of handling garbage has appeared in some cities. |
| E．It will affect China’s transformation towards green development. |
| F．Over 200 million tons of garbage is produced each year in some cities. |
| G．The good habit of garbage classification can improve the living environment. |
6 . Before you throw your trash into the nearest can, think for a moment. Not all your garbage can be dumped into one trashcan. It needs to be sorted out with different things going into different bins. Waste classification, a practice that has long been normal in developed countries like Japan, is the new challenge for many Chinese urban residents. However, though initially you might need to rack your brains to figure out which trash goes into which can, in the long run, the result is well worth the effort.
Landfills, sites where waste is buried and covered over with soil, are a major method of disposing of residential waste in China. However, considering the environmental disaster associated with burying waste, there is a pressing need to reduce the amount of waste that goes into a landfill. Classification, sorting waste into different categories such as harmful waste, recyclables and kitchen waste, is a key solution.
Currently, 46 cities across China, are carrying out a program that aims to put in place a classification-based garbage disposal system by the end of 2020. It is hoped that this will reduce the quantity of waste that ends up in landfills by a large degree. Shanghai came into the media focus in early July after it carried out compulsory garbage sorting rules that those who fail to dispose of garbage properly should be fined. Beijing is reviewing its regulations to follow in Shanghai’s footsteps. The new rules may cause short-term inconvenience but they are meant to help residents follow the concept of garbage classification for the common good.
As the programs show, residents can gradually develop this habit with their growing consciousness and the help of advanced technology. In future, this practice should be adopted across China, in urban cities and rural areas alike. With public involvement, China’s garbage sorting program will contribute not only to the nation’s sustainable (可持续的) development but also to making the planet a better place to live in.
1. What is the most probable reason for classifying waste？| A．No site for burying waste. | B．People’s habit. |
| C．Economic cost. | D．Environmental pollution. |
| A．To practise waste classification. | B．To protect environment. |
| C．To save oil for farming. | D．To reduce the quantity of waste. |
| A．A program adopted across China | B．Shanghai carried out new disposal rules |
| C．Doing the best with waste | D．Protecting environment is necessary |
7 . 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 |
