1 . In the last two weeks, the only things that have been thrown by Esther Penarrubia have been a broken toy, an old T-shirt used to clean shoes, a balloon from a party and the backing from a sheet of stickers. Ms Penarrubia, who has a PhD in agricultural engineering, realized that her lifestyle was called “zero waste” after watching a TED talk in November 2015.
It was when Ms Penarrubia moved house that she decided to remove single-use plastic from her life to reduce her family’s waste and thus changed her lifestyle.
Bulk (批量) buying, reusing old materials, searching second-hand shops and minimizing products which use plastic have been the key factor to her lifestyle, which sees her family send just one piece of rubbish to landfill every fortnight. Ms Penarrubia tries to remove all plastic products but if she does purchase any, like olive oil, she will bulk buy in a five-litre bottle and will recycle when finished. This also applies to cleaning products. Glass jars and containers are repurposed after use and kitchen leftovers go in the compost (堆肥) bin. The family grow their own tomatoes, cabbages, broccoli and herbs at home and also have orange and apple trees, while she buys fresh fruit, vegetables and bread in bulk from local suppliers for the week.
Ms Penarrubia believes changing to a zero-waste lifestyle is easier and cheaper than per-ceived, but admits the challenging part in convincing others that it can be achievable. She said, “If you think and organize your buying habits, consume less things from better quality, choose reusable alternatives, buy everything you can in quantity from the second-hand market—then it’s not more expensive and you can save money. “Zero waste” culture doesn’t only consist of the reduction of our waste, it involves a more conscious lifestyle and way of consumption.
1. What has Esther thrown during the past two weeks？| A．A balloon and an old T-shirt. |
| B．A broken toy and a pair of shoes. |
| C．An old T-shirt and some stickers. |
| D．A balloon and some glass containers. |
| A．Two weeks ago. |
| B．After watching a TED talk. |
| C．When moving into the new home. |
| D．After running a second-hand shop. |
| A．By eating less. |
| B．By running a second-hand shop. |
| C．By recycling and shopping smartly. |
| D．By making all the daily goods by herself. |
| A．It’s too expensive. | B．It’s within easy reach. |
| C．It’s unlikely to work. | D．It’s much more demanding. |
2 . The loss of honey bee colonies (蜂群) is worrying experts across the United States. But a man in California thinks he has found an unusual way to save them. Michael Thiele does something that he calls the “rewilding” of honeybees. He makes bees live in natural hives (蜂箱) high above the ground, as they did for millions of years.
Thiele, who is from Germany, has been making the special hives since 2008. He says, “people can do this very, very simple thing — including making wooden hives and attaching them to trees.” He also sometimes hangs the hives from the tops of buildings or puts them on high wooden tables for a similar effect. The hives then become attractive to bees looking for a nest, and they usually moved in their new “home” within a few weeks.
Honey bees are important because they help plants produce about a quarter of the food that Americans eat. Experts say the bee population is getting smaller because of climate change and other human-caused behaviors. We are building houses and cities on land where they live, and using chemicals that are killing them. Last winter, U. S. beekeepers lost almost 40% and the number is still dropping. That result comes from a report this year by the Bee Informed Partnership, a group of people in the bee industry. It was the worst winter die off in more than a decade.
Thiele says the usual ways people raise honey bees are bad for their health. He refused to accept the white boxes that traditional beekeepers use. He also refuses to use chemicals, smoke or protective clothes when he works with bees. He touches them with his hands.
Thiele says his hives are both a way to save bees and a personal project. While bees stayed on his hand and arm, he said, “It feels so exciting and I feel how deeply we belong and how important it is to protect them.”
1. In what way did Thiele help save honey bee colonies?| A．By placing bee hives close to the ground. |
| B．By changing the former location of the bee hives. |
| C．By keeping bees in high buildings and wooden tables. |
| D．By making bees live in natural hives high off the ground. |
| A．Some human activities. | B．Change of people’s diet. |
| C．Fewer profits of honey. | D．Cold weather. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Curious. | C．Unfavourable. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．The Population Of Bees Is Dropping Sharply | B．A Man Came Up With A New Plan To Save Bees |
| C．Honey Bees Play An Important Role In People's Life | D．The Location Of Bee Hives Matters To Their Survival |
Humans
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4 . When a heavy storm hit, residents of the floating community of Schoonschip in Amsterdam had little doubt about whether they could ride it out. They tied up their bikes and outdoor benches, and checked in with neighbors to ensure everyone had enough food and water as their neighborhood slid up and down its steel foundational pillars (支柱), rising along with the water and going back to its original position after the rain stopped.
“We feel safer in storm because we are floating,” says Siti Boelen, a Dutch television producer who moved into Schoonschip two years ago. As sea levels rise and supercharged storms cause waters to rise, floating neighborhoods offer an experiment in flood defense that could allow coastal communities to better fight against climate change.
A floating house can be constructed on any shoreline and is able to deal with rising seas by remaining on the top of the water’s surface. Unlike houseboats, which can easily be moved and relocated, floating homes are fixed to the shore and are usually connected to the local sewer (污水管道) system and power grid. They are structurally similar to houses built on land, but instead of a basement, they have a concrete hull (船体) that acts as a counterbalance, allowing them to remain stable in the water.
Severe wind and rain, or even the passing of large cruise ships, can make the buildings rock. Siti Boelen, the Schoonschip resident, says that when she first moved in, stormy weather made her think twice. “You feel it in your stomach,” she says, adding that she has gotten used to the feeling. Floating homes also require extra infrastructure and work to connect to the electricity grid and sewer system.
But the benefits may outweigh the costs. “If there are floods, it’s expected that many people will move to higher ground. But the alternative is to stay close to coastal cities and explore expansion onto the water,” says Rutger de Graaf. “If you consider that in the second half of the century, hundreds of millions of people will be displaced by sea level rise, we need to start now to increase the scale of floating developments.”
1. What did local residents think when a heavy storm hit?| A．They could get through it. |
| B．They could control the flood. |
| C．They could get some bikes after it. |
| D．They could gain enough food in it. |
| A．She has a sense of security in a storm. |
| B．She gets along well with her neighbors. |
| C．She has produced TV sets used in the storm. |
| D．She makes contributions to defending against flood. |
| A．By listing figures. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By analyzing reasons. | D．By making comparisons. |
| A．The impacts of stormy weather. |
| B．The significance of thinking twice. |
| C．The higher costs of building houses. |
| D．The challenges faced by floating houses. |
5 . Douglas Thron's love for animals began when he was a little kid. After he grew up, Thron worked as a photographer for shows like Discovery Channel's Shark Week, filming the Great White sharks off the coast of Santa Cruz, Calif. But Thron says it was the Paradise fire in California in 2018 that pushed him to do animal rescue work.
At the time, Thron was filming a man who was rescuing cats after the fire using a special camera. The camera uses heat to look for the animals at night. Thron and the man talked about how wonderful it would be to put one on a drone to search for animals more easily. He explains that flying a drone over a big disaster gives you a real feel for how serious the disaster is. He adds, “You definitely get inspired to drop everything to help as much as possible. The feeling I get when I rescue an animal is an unbelievable feeling, so it just keeps me going.”
The first animal Thron ever rescued was a dog after a hurricane happened, which destroyed hundreds of houses. Thron tested out flying a drone and found the dog in the middle of where hundreds of houses had been destroyed. “I flew the drone over and I found him. Nobody claimed him after 30 days so I adopted him, and he's a super wonderful dog,” he says.
Thron adds that he's been going non-stop since then. His TV show Doug to the Rescue shows some of his heartwarming animal rescues, including those after Hurricane Laura in Louisiana in 2020 and after fires in Northern California and Oregon. Thron also helped rescue koalas after the horrible fires ravaged parts of Australia and burned down a number of houses in 2020, using drones for the first time there to help locate so many animals.
1. Why did Douglas Thron film the Great White sharks before 2018?| A．He wanted to protect them. | B．They were his favorite animals. |
| C．It was part of his work. | D．He did so to get close to nature. |
| A．The animal's size. | B．The animal's loud noise. |
| C．The animal's living habit. | D．The animal's body temperature. |
| A．It's now living with Thron. | B．It was claimed after being found. |
| C．Thron found it through its barks in ruins. | D．It's helping Thron find other trapped animals. |
| A．Protected. | B．Destroyed. | C．Changed. | D．Improve. |
6 . The oldest living animal species on earth cannot be known for sure, because not every animal species or fossil (化石) has yet been discovered, but the current best guess is the horseshoe crab (马蹄蟹), which has remained pretty much unchanged since the Ordovician (奥陶纪) period, 445 million years ago.
Due to its status as one of the oldest living animals, the horseshoe crab, which is actually more closely related to spiders than crabs, has been dubbed a living fossil. As far as we know, no animals from about 500 million years ago are alive today, although there are numerous fossils showing they did exist in the past.
The horseshoe crab is known for its simple but effective immune system. When invaded by a foreign organism, such as bacteria, the blood in the local area of the invasion immediately turns into a gel-like (凝胶状的) substance. This substance has been used in modern medicine to test for the presence of bacteria on a surface, better than the capabilities of purely artificial detectors. This excellent immune system has surely contributed to the horseshoe crab becoming the oldest living animal.
Along with the horseshoe crab, several other species have survived since the Ordovician period. All of these organisms live in the water and all have evolved and adapted in order to survive the changes of earth’s climates, making them some of the oldest species on earth. Perhaps these water-dwelling species are not as well-known as the horsehoe crab because of their small size and strange appearances; not only are difficult to spot, but they are not as recognizable to the general population as a type of crab.
There have been groups of bacteria that have been around for not only hundreds of millions of years, but actually several billion — far longer than the age of the oldest living animal — but bacteria are not animals.
1. What does the underlined word “dubbed” probably mean?| A．Promised. | B．Called. | C．Seized. | D．Arranged. |
| A．Restaurant. | B．Supermarket. | C．Hospital. | D．Museum. |
| A．Its hair. | B．Its blood. | C．Its fur. | D．Its nail. |
| A．They are difficult to spot. |
| B．They all settle in the water and evolved. |
| C．They are small and have strange appearance. |
| D．They are protected by human beings as a type of crab. |
7 . In the 1970s, my family acquired Mrs Duck as a pet. Mrs Duck was actually a male duck but the name stuck. He would spend hours “fighting” his own reflection — seen in the mirror or the glasses door. If our dog happened to be wandering past, the duck would attack him. Mrs Duck would ride around the backyard on the dog’s back screaming all the way, biting poor old Dog on the back of the head as he flapped his wings.
Dog was either too frightened, too good-natured or enjoyed the attention because he never beat back. Much to our amusement, Dog would tear around the yard with Mrs Duck lying on his back.
This went on for two years, until a neighbour politely asked if we would like to give Mrs Duck to one of her friends, a farmer. They lived on a large farm and their female duck had been killed when a fox got into the yard. Mum agreed as she understood that Mrs Duck was very frustrated.
A few days later, the beaming farmer was on our doorstep with a huge plate of raw steak asking to speak to our mother. “Mrs Duck had only been in the yard a couple of days when I heard a loud noise,” he told her. “I raced to the duck pen to find he had a fox seriously injured, cornered in the yard against the wire netting, wings flapping and continuously screaming. ” The farmer dispatched the fox with a shotgun and Mrs Duck was an instant hero.
Mrs Duck’s fearlessness in the face of any animal that eats meat had set him apart. From then on we called him Mrs Duck, Fox Hunter.
1. What happened between the dog and the duck?| A．The dog would bit and attack the duck. |
| B．The duck often rode on the dog’s back. |
| C．The duck was too frightened to get close to the dog. |
| D．The dog would tear the duck until it lay on the ground. |
| A．I refused the suggestion | B．the dog barked all the way |
| C．my mother was very frustrated | D．the duck was unwilling to leave |
| A．Pleased. | B．Nervous. | C．Frustrated. | D．Depressed. |
| A．An Animal Hero | B．Our Pet, Mrs Duck |
| C．Mrs Duck, Fox Hunter | D．Mrs Duck and the Dog |
8 . China’s leading express companies established “Green Delivery Day” on Tuesday, in a bid to reduce pollution caused by the logistics industry.
China Environmental Protection Foundation, Alibaba Foundation, and China’s express giants including Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao Network, STO Express, YTO Express, ZTO Express, Shanghai Yunda Express and Best Express established “Green Delivery Day” at the 2019 Global Smart Logistics Summit held in Hangzhou, capital of eastern China’s Zhejiang Province. The day will be marked on May 28 each year. They also announced plans to install 50,000 green recycling bins across the country.
China’s express delivery sector handled 50.7 billion parcels in 2018, an increase of 26.6 percent year-on-year, according to the State Post Bureau. Meanwhile, the sector’s income was 603.8 billion yuan (87.37 billion US dollars), up 21.8 percent from the previous year.
However, environmental pollution caused by mass express packaging has aroused concern. The express industry has been making efforts to reduce pollution over the past few years.
The emergence of digital express sheets has helped save over 300 billion sheets of paper, while recycled environmental-friendly packaging has helped save 200 million disposable plastic bags.
Meanwhile, express firms have introduced more environmental-friendly materials to make packaging bags. And they have used new energy vehicles, and set up recycle stations across the country.
“I would like to put express cartons into a recycling bin to promote the recycling of cartons. It is not just about the express industry, but the whole of society. And the establishment of ‘Green Delivery Day’ can attract more people to engage,” a customer said at the launching ceremony.
1. What is “Green Delivery Day” established for?| A．To earn more money. | B．To reduce related pollution. |
| C．To set up recycle stations. | D．To use environmental-friendly materials. |
| A．They earned $50.7 billion. |
| B．Their tax was $87.37 billion. |
| C．They have installed 50,000 green recycling bins. |
| D．Their income increased by 21.8 percent than the past year. |
| A．By recycling the paper. | B．By using digital express sheets. |
| C．By setting up recycle stations. | D．By making environmental-friendly paper. |
| A．Express firms should use new energy vehicles. |
| B．As to pollution, the express firms are to blame. |
| C．More people will join in the recycling of cartons. |
| D．The materials of the packaging bags materials is vital. |
9 . By March 2018, Cape Town’s biggest reservoir (储水库) had dropped to just 11 percent of its capacity. The city was close to turning off the taps. “I’ve never experienced anything like it,” said Samantha Reinders. Like everyone else here, Reinders learned to wash, cook and drink using just the official daily limit—50 liters. Posters were put up everywhere, telling 400,000 people in Cape Town how far the reservoirs had dropped. They also showed the countdown until “Day Zero”. Finally, in June, the rains returned. People ran outside to feel the water flow on their faces. Cape Town’s water shortage was over, at least temporarily. “Day Zero” had never quite arrived.
Afterward, an international group of scientists analyzed Cape Town’s drought and water shortage. They studied computer models and rainfall records. Finally, they came to a conclusion: Climate change wasn’t the culprit (罪魁祸首) of the drought. It hadn’t begotten the drought. But it had tripled (使成三倍) the chance that a drought would occur.
Friederike Otto is a climate scientist at Oxford University in England and lead author of that study. The risk of drought could triple again by the end of the 21st century, she said. That’s when global temperatures are predicted to rise another 1 degree Celsius.
Co-author Piotr Wolski said that better planning could help in the future. The area could manage its water reservoirs more carefully. People could fix leaky dams and make use of a variety of water sources instead of only reservoirs. “Drought may or may not translate into a crisis (危机),” he pointed out.
In many ways, said Reinders, the water crisis made a change to the city. Most people, across race, gender, religion and class, did their best to save water and help their neighbors out. And most were sticking to the water-saving habits they had learned. “I think this is the new normal. And that is pretty much the word on the street,” said Reinders.
1. What does Paragraph 1 show about Cape Town?| A．It experienced a severe drought. |
| B．It was carrying out a water-saving campaign. |
| C．It needed one more reservoir urgently. |
| D．It was repairing its water-supply lines. |
| A．Caused | B．Stopped | C．Expanded | D．Worsened |
| A．Never too late to mend. | B．Be aware of the potential leaky dams. |
| C．Save for a rainy day. | D．Make full use of the water reservoirs. |
| A．To call on people to show kindness to others. |
| B．To stress people’s efforts to save water. |
| C．To encourage people to stick to their good habits. |
| D．To show the beneficial sides of the water crisis. |
10 . Nowadays, air pollution is a global issue and particularly difficult to deal with in big cities with a large population. According to WHO, around 90% of people worldwide breathe polluted air, which is said to cause eight million deaths per year.
The Swedish furniture company IKEA hopes to reduce this number by producing the GUNRID curtain. It uses a technology that has been developed by IKEA suppliers in cooperation with several European and Asian universities over the course of the last few years. The process is activated by both outdoor and indoor light.
“For me, it’s important to work on products that solve actual problems and are closely connected with people. Textiles (纺织品) are used in homes and by enabling a curtain to clean the air, we are creating an affordable solution that does not take up too much space and also makes the home more beautiful,” says Mauricio Affonso, Product Developer at IKEA Range and Supply. “Our curtain will be available to the public in two years,” he adds.
For many years, IKEA has been trying to stop using harmful chemicals and reducing carbon footprints. Last year, IKEA started the Better Air Now campaign, aiming to turn rice straw—rice harvesting remains that are traditionally burned and contribute heavily to air pollution—into a new renewable material source for IKEA products. IKEA has also been committed to becoming positive to deal with climate change by 2030, reducing our overall climate footprint by 70% on average per product (compared to 2016).
In addition, the company has recently been acclaimed for its practical commitment that 70% of the materials used to make its products were either made from renewable or recycled materials.
“We know that there is no single solution to the problem of air pollution, but we will work for a long term for positive change, to enable people to live healthier lives,” says Lena Pripp-Kovac, Head of Sustainability at Inter IKEA Group.
1. What can we learn about the GUNRID curtain?| A．It is on sale at present. | B．It works well in dark rooms. |
| C．It is able to make the air cleaner. | D．It was invented independently by IKEA. |
| A．The Better Air Now campaign. | B．The wide market for rice straw. |
| C．IKEA’s efforts to reduce air pollution. | D．Tips to control one’s climate footprint. |
| A．Criticized. | B．Evaluated. | C．Warned. | D．Praised. |
| A．To suggest some measures to fight air pollution. |
| B．To give a report on a new technology product. |
| C．To introduce the furniture company IKEA. |
| D．To research a special curtain from IKEA. |
