1 . Rain Collection
What do you like to do on a rainy day —sit inside and listen to the pitter-patter on the roof or splash outside and feel the cold drops on your face? Whatever you choose, rain is vitally essential in the nature.
As climate change heats up the planet and causes extreme weather, more places face water shortages.
Humans have collected rain since ancient times.
Even in dry climates, there is a lot of potential rainwater that can be effectively harvested and utilized. This rich yet often overlooked resource has the potential to significantly contribute to water conservation efforts, especially in regions facing water shortages. Just one inch of rain falling on a medium-sized house produces over 600 gallons of water.
Nowadays, rainwater is still used as a primary supply in many places in the world, like Vietnam and Hawaii. In places with piped-in water, rainwater is not commonly used, but this is changing. Rainwater harvesting is getting more popular since it’s easy to do and helps create water security.
A.Large roofs can, hence, collect greater amount of water. |
B.Rainwater can also be used for fountains and ponds. |
C.We all deeply depend on the nourishment of rain. |
D.To secure future water supply, we need new sources. |
E.Now, many people are returning to this practice. |
F.Rainwater is clean but it gets dirty from the roof. |
The First Space Cat
In a few weeks, space scientists will celebrate a remarkable event — the 60th anniversary of the launch of the first cat into space, an astronautical success that has never been repeated.
In the early 60s, dogs and monkeys were the animals usually used by scientists to find out exactly
A total of 14 street cats
Then,
“In the 60s,
3 . Flamingos (火烈鸟) make long friendships
When it comes to making friends, humans often seek people with similar interests and personalities.
Scientist Dr Paul Rose had already spotted that flamingos seemed to form narrow exclusive circles.
Each bird wore a ring around one leg with a unique code to tell them apart. McCully spent months studying their behaviour and built a personality profile for each flamingo. She found that confident, aggressive flamingos walked proudly around in their friendship groups, while the quieter birds carefully avoid those individuals.
McCully and Rose found that for the Caribbean birds, personality seemed to matter more in friendships than it did for Chilean flamingos. Caribbean birds were more likely to defend their friends and the confident ones had much larger social groups than the quieter birds. The researchers found this surprising because in many ways, including body shape and how they search for food in the wild, the two species are very similar.
A.Their long-lasting relationships are important for survival in the wild. |
B.He teamed up with Fiona McCully, a scientist in animal behaviour. |
C.The scientists conclude that it’s important to keep flamingos in a large flock. |
D.According to a recent study, so do flamingos. |
E.This avoidance may serve to prevent the fights. |
F.New research shows that flamingos with brighter colors tend to be more aggressive. |
4 . One summer midnight several years ago, standing outside a wooden cabin in Michigan River, I looked up. The sky was filled with thousands of stars, the sight of which was almost enough to make me, a non-believer, offer a word of
As a bat scientist, Eklof’s work on bats requires a specific kind of darkness—the
Excess light is incredibly
It is worth mentioning that middle-aged writer like Eklof can
The bottom line: We can change if we want to. Some of the solutions to light pollution— motion-detecting lights, shielded lights that do not
Right now it is hard to know what that middle way might look like. In 50 years, every city could be equipped with an array of programmed and
A.honour | B.gratitude | C.optimism | D.determination |
A.artificial | B.brilliant | C.faint | D.absolute |
A.achieved | B.distracted | C.enhanced | D.threatened |
A.resulting from | B.bringing about | C.judging by | D.contributing to |
A.decorated | B.restored | C.lit | D.faded |
A.effective | B.sensitive | C.positive | D.destructive |
A.scares | B.blows | C.pulls | D.turns |
A.accustomed | B.subject | C.available | D.restricted |
A.on duty | B.in turn | C.on time | D.in public |
A.stimulate | B.advocate | C.negotiate | D.account |
A.challenging | B.appealing | C.demanding | D.outstanding |
A.absorb | B.stretch | C.transform | D.reflect |
A.reach for | B.apply to | C.long for | D.adapt to |
A.Therefore | B.Furthermore | C.However | D.Instead |
A.fundamentally | B.scientifically | C.environmentally | D.economically |
A.They are not used to living in hot places. |
B.They will get away from the hot days. |
C.They will not be back until it gets cold. |
D.They are reluctant to go on holiday. |
6 . This Halloween, scare off evil spirits while protecting the earth!
1. Create home-made costumes
Apart from the fact that they’re expensive, flammable and mostly unoriginal, shop bought Halloween outfits are a terrific burden on the environment. From the much-too-high amount of water that is used to create them to the seven million costumes that will be thrown straight into the bin, and the microfibres released into the water from the ones that do get washed there are PLENTY of reasons against shop buying.
And let’s be frank, home-made costumes are far more unique and fun to create. For the scariest costume we could possibly imagine, why not dress up as the earth on fire?
2. Be considerate with your pumpkins
Pumpkins are a wonderful Halloween tradition but can be more damaging to the environment than you’d originally think. Harmful pesticides and fertilizers are used during farming and the nature of their large-scale production means they can be transported over vast distances Similarly, how you dispose of them once you’re done determines how big an impact they have.
Don’t let their delicious innards go to waste and instead make a yummy pumpkin treat, even go so far as to save the pumpkin seeds either for you or the birds. Then, once your carved pumpkin is past it’s best, make sure to compost (制成堆肥) it rather than throwing it in the bin-this will prevent the release of methane as it breaks down.
3. Scare yourself silly at home
Rather than travelling to far-flung places, keep the frights closer to home.
Halloween party to get everyone together and encourage car-pooling or the use of public transport.
Read scary stories and create a Halloween hunt in your garden for children to run around and find treats.
4. Make your own trick-or-treating goodies
If you’ve taken on the American tradition of trick-or- treating, why not whip up a few Halloween treats of your own? Apart from being tastier and more fun to look at, they’ll also reduce your consumption of packaging and likely will have a lower carbon footprint. Suggest to any neighbours that they might do the same, and if you go trick-or-treating yourself, be sure to use a reusable carrier.
1. What can we do to help the environment during the Halloween according to the passage?A.Making use of the pumpkin innards to make fertilizers for your garden. |
B.Going to the local shop to buy some costumes and recycling them after using. |
C.Throwing a Halloween party with your friends out of town. |
D.Inviting your neighbors to taste your home-made treats. |
A.Harmful pesticides. | B.High carbon footprint. |
C.Damage to birds. | D.Harmful gas emission. |
A.What to do to celebrate the Halloween traditionally |
B.Why is it important to have an eco-friendly Halloween |
C.How to have a Halloween beneficial to the environment |
D.How to celebrate the Halloween to cheer yourself up |
A. deliberately B. justifiable C. accumulating D. consume E. spills F. spent G. potential H. charging I. boost J. subscription K. collected |
Is rental fashion the future?
With a cost-of-living crisis and climate awareness sitting heavily at the forefront of our minds, many of us are having to make choices about what we
Even the fastest of fashion retailers are taking note; this summer, BooHoo announced that they will be
However, there will still be times where a new item feels like a
So here comes rental fashion. The set-up is simple. Rent three, five or ten items and swap (替换) every month, with prices starting from £39 a month for a three-item. In the case of any accidents, do not fear
At the end of each cycle, you’ll receive an email reminding you to choose your next box. With a three-item return, items can be returned at a local drop-off point, whilst bigger parcels will be
8 . Eradajere Oleita thinks she may have a partial solution for two of American’s persistent problems: garbage and poverty. It’s called the Chip Bag Project. The 26-year-old student and environmentalist from Detroit is asking a favor of local snack lovers: Rather than toss your empty chip bags into the trash, donate them so she can turn them into sleeping bags for the homeless.
Chip eaters drop off their empty bags from Doritos, Lay’s, and other favorites at two locations in Detroit: a print shop and a clothing store, where Oleita and her volunteer helpers collect them. After they sanitize the chip bags in soapy hot water, they slice them open, lay them flat, and iron them together. They use padding and liners from old coats to line the insides.
It takes about four hours to sew a sleeping bag, and each takes around 150 to 300 chip bags, depending on whether they’re single-serve or family size. The result is a sleeping bag that is “waterproof, lightweight, and easy to carry around,” Oleita told the Detroit News.
Since its start in 2020, the Chip Bag Project has collected more than 800,000 chip bags and, as of last December, created 110 sleeping bags. Sure, it would be simpler to raise the money to buy new sleeping bags. But that’s only half the goal for Oleita — whose family moved to the United States from Nigeria a decade ago with the hope of attaining a better life — and her fellow volunteers. “They are dedicated to making an impact not only socially, but environmentally,” she says.
And, of course, there’s the symbolism of salvaging bags that would otherwise land in the trash and using them to help the homeless. It’s a powerful reminder that environmental injustice and poverty often go hand in hand. As Oleita told the media: “I think it’s time to show connections between all of these issues.”
1. What does the Chip Bag Project call on people to do?A.To throw empty chip bags into dustbins |
B.To bring empty chip bags to appointed locations |
C.To donate them to those homeless |
D.To sanitize empty chip bags for recycle |
A.charge | B.protect | C.load | D.fill |
A.To lead a better life with her immigrated family in U.S.A |
B.To launch a charity project with other volunteers in school time. |
C.To make a difference both socially and environmentally. |
D.To help those homeless by giving them handmade sleeping bags. |
A.adaptable and extroverted |
B.creative and warm-hearted |
C.aggressive and capable |
D.modest and generous |
A. urgent B. transformative C. presents D. grabbed E. declaration F. collective G. capacity H. worsening I. determined J. foundation K. responsibility |
Save the World
The United Nations issued a report last week warning that humans are destroying nature at such a rate that life on Earth is at risk. When the report came out, it naturally
The report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is clear on what’s at stake and what needs to change. IPBES chair Robert Watson says the “overwhelming evidence”
First, don’t immerse yourself in despair, because despair leads to inertia (惰性) and doing nothing means certain disaster. Every action to save nature will improve our
10 . When Carolyn Kurle first visited Alaska’s Hawadax Island, then known as Rat Island, she immediately noticed the silence. “When you’re on an island that’s never had rats, it’s just like birds everywhere — it’s really loud,” she says. “So when you get to an island that does have rats, you really notice because it’s cacophony versus quiet.”
Nowadays Hawadax is once again a noisy place. Roughly a decade after a successful effort to rid the island of its predatory rodents (捕食性啮齿动物), a mass of seabirds has returned. And the benefits have extended across the island’s entire seashore ecosystem, which is again full of diverse life. These findings, published in Scientific Reports, show that certain ecosystems can recover with surprising speed if given the chance.
“This study is an example of something positive that can happen when we humans take action to clean up after ourselves,” says Kurle, who is lead author of the study and a conservation ecologist at the University of California, San Diego. “It also highlights how everything is interlinked, especially in coastal systems.”
The greedy rodents colonized Hawadax after a Japanese shipwreck in the 1780s, and they quickly wiped out seabird communities. Kurle’s first findings, published in 2008, showed that the rats affected not just birds but the entire food chain — all the way down to algae (藻类). Without birds to eat seashore invertebrates (无脊椎动物), populations of snails and other species feeding on plants exploded and consumed much of the marine kelp (巨藻), which provides crucial habitat for other organisms. “Certain invasive species can have impacts beyond those that are most obvious,” Kurle says.
Those early findings inspired the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy and Island Conservation, to wipe out the rats by dropping poison on Hawadax. Kurle and her colleagues secured funding to survey the island 5 and 11 years after taking the action. They found that its ecosystem had steadily recovered and now resembles that of other Aleutian Islands that were never invaded by rats, with significantly fewer marine invertebrates and much more kelp cover.
“Very few rat-eradication projects have focused on the impact on marine ecosystems, so the Hawadax Island case is really noteworthy,” says University of Tennessee, Knoxville, ecologist Daniel Simberloff, who was not involved in the study. “This is a very cool, elegant result from an academic ecology standpoint and, of course, is important in terms of conservation.”
1. What does “cacophony” in paragraph 1 most probably mean?A.Silent night. | B.Messy beach. |
C.Limited space. | D.Disagreeable sounds. |
A.Greedy rodents. | B.Marine kelp. |
C.Seashore invertebrates. | D.Invasive species. |
A.setting traps and catching rats |
B.raising money for follow-up study |
C.joining hands with conservation groups |
D.comparing Hawadax with other rat-free islands |
A.Birds and rats cannot co-exist. |
B.Rats are invasive species that must be rooted out. |
C.Ecosystem is too delicate to restore itself once disturbed. |
D.Removing invaders on land can benefit marine populations. |