1 .
| A．The harm done by single-use plastics. |
| B．The topic for the woman’s composition. |
| C．Environmental issues. |
| D．Some recent hot news. |
Why Is Littering a Surprisingly Big Issue?
Compared with the blindingly obvious environmental issues we hear about every day, littering often takes a backseat -- but it’s more pressing than we may think.
If you were to throw, say, a banana peel (香蕉皮) out of your car while driving along the motorway, that would be a completely harmless action, due to the fact that it’s part of a fruit -- right? Actually, no. A banana peel can take up to two years to decompose (分解), and with a third of motorists admitting to littering while driving, that’s a whole lot of abandoned banana peels, or much worse. An orange peel and a cigarette butt has a similar biodegrading (生物降解) term to that of a banana, but tin and aluminium cans last up to 100 years, and plastic bottles last forever, as do glass bottles, Styrofoam cups and plastic bags.
Despite the fact that longer-lasting materials will serve to damage the environment and its animals for longer, we can’t only measure the severity of a certain type of rubbish by its lifetime. For example, despite having a fairly short biodegrading period, more than 120 tons of cigarette-related litter is abandoned in the UK every day. Similarly, our regular littering here and there has caused the UK’s rat population to increase by 60 million. This suddenly isn’t so mysterious when you consider that since the 1960s our annual littering has increased by an astonishing 500 per cent.
It’s not a cheap habit either: UK taxpayers shelve out £500 million in order to keep our streets clean, and when you include our green spaces, that goes up to £1 billion. So, it’s not surprising that if caught fly-tipping you could face a £20,000 fine or even jail time and, if you littered something dangerous, the court could give you five years to serve.
To take back our beautiful countryside and cities we need to do more than simply not leaving rubbish where it ought not to be. We need a pride makeover, and we need to truly care more about the world around us.
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Are Oceans Silent?
Most sea creatures, from whales and dolphins to fish, sharks and shrimps, respond to sound, and many can produce it. They use it to hunt and to hide, find mates and food, send messages and give warnings, establish territories, warn off competitors, confuse their targets, deceive enemies, and sense changes in water and conditions. Marine animals click bones, grind teeth and belch gases (磨牙打嗝); use special organs to make various noises. Far from the ‘silent deep’, the oceans are so noisy.
Into this age-long confused noise, in the blink of an evolutionary eye, has entered a new thunder: the trembling sound of mighty engines as 46,220 large ships passed the world’s shipping courses. Scientists say that background noise in the ocean has increased roughly by 15 decibels (分贝) in the past 50 years. It may not sound like much in overall terms, but it is enough, according to many marine biologists, to mask the normal sounds of ocean life going about its business. At its most intense, some even say noise causes whales to become disoriented, dolphins to suffer from ‘the bends’, fish to go deaf, leave their breeding grounds or fail to form groups—enough to disorganize the basic biology of two thirds of the planet.
“Undersea noise pollution is like the death of a thousand cuts”, says Sylvia Earie, chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Each sound in itself may not be a matter of critical concern, but taken all together, the noise from shipping, earthquake-related surveys, and military activity is creating a totally different environment than existed even 50 years ago. That high level of noise is bound to have a hard, sweeping impact on life in the sea.
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Deep diving exploration
While most photographers put their cameras away when the night’s dark curtain falls, Zhang Fan gathers his equipment and starts his blackwater diving adventure.
Blackwater diving involves photographing small, free-floating (自由浮动的) ocean creatures that move up to the ocean’s surface (表面)after dark or in any area
Still quite new in China, blackwater diving
From small eel larva (幼龄鳗鱼) to big, fierce great white sharks, each of Zhang’s underwater photographs has a “wow” factor. But the story behind each photo adds more emotional value to the work
“It is like meeting an old neighbor,” the 35-year-old photographer recalled, speaking of the touching moment when he returned to a location after a long time only
While the underwater world
Zhang said that he encountered many dangerous moments underwater, including
“Corals (珊瑚) are
This risky
THE EAGLE
This is the kind of story you need when it seems like the world is out of control
Freedom and Jeff
Freedom and I have been together 10 years this summer. She came in as a baby in 2011 with two
She was going to be put down that Friday, and I was supposed to come in on that Thursday afternoon. I didn't want to go to the center that Thursday,
In the spring of 2013, I was diagnosed
Fast forward to November 2013, I went in for my last checkup. I was told that if the cancer was not all gone after eight rounds of chemo, then my last option was
So the first thing I did was
6 .
| A．She agrees with the man’s plan. |
| B．She is concerned about the weather. |
| C．She considers it unwise to go outside. |
| D．She has a better plan than having a picnic. |
7 . Keeping a bit of the outdoors inside is nothing new, but houseplant collections have become a popular social media trend — which means that more people than ever are discovering the comfort and beauty that caring for plants brings.
“One study showed that patients at a hospital who had plants in their room reported less pain, lower blood pressure, less fatigue and less anxiety than patients without plants in their rooms,” says Jenny Seham, a New York-based psychologist. She explains: “Cortisol, the stress hormone, has been shown to lower with plant interaction, reducing fatigue, irritability (易怒) and blood pressure.”
Research has also shown that having plants and gardening increase productivity and levels of serotonin, the neurotransmitter responsible for lifting our mood.
Before you fill your space with greenery, consider how you’ll interact with your plants.
If you have a small space or aren’t sure how much time you’re willing to invest in “plant parenting.” Start slow. “
| A．For instance, is there enough space for plants in areas where you spend a lot of time? |
| B．Half the fun of gardening is that you never know exactly what’s going to come up. |
| C．It’s a feel-good hobby that’s supported by science. |
| D．While indoor gardening can boost your feelings of wellbeing, help reduce stress and promote relaxation, it’s not, of course, a substitute for a trained mental health professional. |
| E．The theory is that plant care helps us focus on the present moment and provides a feeling of accomplishment. |
| F．Just one plant can make a difference. |
8 . Technology is playing a vital role in preservation and ecology research. Drones (无人机) hold huge
The British International Education Association hosted a conference in January to
According to Claudio Sillero, biology professor at Oxford University, technology is changing how preservation research is done — but it’s in a(n)
But teaching preservation and ecology courses in university
Wich’s team of researchers used techniques to develop a fully automated drone technology system that
| A．shortage | B．threats | C．potential | D．responsibilities |
| A．researchers | B．authorities | C．opponents | D．professionals |
| A．highlight | B．overlook | C．assess | D．calculate |
| A．education | B．preparation | C．preservation | D．distinction |
| A．evolutionary | B．flexible | C．virtual | D．dramatic |
| A．As a result | B．In conclusion | C．On the contrary | D．For example |
| A．differs | B．equals | C．multiplies | D．struggles |
| A．obstacle | B．leap | C．equivalent | D．exception |
| A．ill-intentioned | B．fully-prepared | C．well-established | D．narrowly-applied |
| A．definite | B．vague | C．simple | D．limited |
| A．controls | B．tracks | C．supervises | D．improves |
| A．earnestly | B．independently | C．secretly | D．impersonally |
| A．bridge | B．fix | C．dismiss | D．grasp |
| A．Therefore | B．Moreover | C．However | D．Otherwise |
| A．fired | B．insulted | C．qualified | D．criticized |
9 . Many people know that trash is a big problem on planet Earth. What many people don’t know is that trash has become a problem in outer space too.
Statistically, there are more than 22,000 pieces of junk in space around the earth. And these are just the items that we can see from the surface of the earth by telescopes or radars.
Objects, like bits of old space rockets or satellites, move around the planet at very high speeds, so fast that even a very small piece can break important satellites or become dangerous to people, particularly astronauts. If the tiniest piece of junk crashed into a spacecraft, it could damage the vehicle. That’s because the faster an object moves, the greater the impact if the object collides with something else.
To help minimize additional space junk, countries around the world have agreed to limit the time their space tools stay in orbit to 25 years. Each tool must be built to fall safely into the earth’s atmosphere, or the mass of gases that surround the earth, after that.
Many scientists are also proposing different ways to clean up space junk. The Germans have been planning a space mission with robots that would collect pieces of space trash and bring them back to Earth so that they can be safely destroyed.
“In our opinion the problem is very challenging, and it’s quite urgent as well,” said Marco Castronuovo, an Italian Space Agency researcher who is working to solve the problem.
“The time to act is now; as we go farther in time we will need to remove more and more fragments,” he says.
| A．In the upper parts of the atmosphere, it will burn up. |
| B．There are also millions of smaller pieces of junk that we can’t see. |
| C．Blowing up older satellites with a missile may create thousands of smaller pieces! |
| D．One reason that it’s urgent is that countries are sending more and more objects into space. |
| E．When two objects in space collide, the two objects break into many smaller pieces. |
| F．Years of space exploration have left tons of “space junk” in orbit (轨道) around the planet. |
Coco-Cola’s Innovative Solution to Plastic Pollution
Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing problem of the 21st Century with plastic waste almost everywhere. It is estimated that just in 2016, the world produced over 320 million tons of plastic, and this number is set to double by 2034.
Plastic waste even makes its way into our oceans with 8 million pieces of plastic pollution per day polluting our waters and destroying the habitat for hundreds of species. It is now believed that there may be around 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean weighing in total up to 269,000 tons. It’s been crystal clear for a long time that the situation is horrible and something needs to be done, and fast. Luckily, Coca-Cola stepped up to the challenge and came up with one innovative and rather effective solution. The firm is replacing its plastic wrapping in Europe with a new paper board technology.
This new tech is called the KeelClip and it is a first for the non-alcohol ready-to-drink (NARTD) industry. Using KeelClips, Coca-Cola aims to remove all plastic wrap from its can multipacks in all? European Union markets by the end of 2021. The firm is optimistic that the move will save 2,000 tons of plastic and 3,000 tons of CO2 annually.
“Innovation is a key principle of our sustainable packaging work and the application of this fully recyclable paperboard KeelClipTM, which is composed of a top board that the cans clip into and central cardboard ‘keel’ — similar to a ship’s keel — that stabilizes the pack, is another example of how we are delivering on our commitment to remove all unnecessary and hard to recycle single- use plastic from our products. We hope this eco-friendly initative is a conscious approach to dealing with plastic pollution,” said Joe Franses, Vice President, Sustainability at Coca-Cola European Partners.
