Throughout the world, only 15% of the material that are used to make clothing is properly recycled, according to the Alle SacUrthur Club, an organization in Liverpool, UK, that boosts the circular economy. Most clothing waste—an     1    (estimate) 82 million tonnes from the fashion industry alone-produced every year ends up buried or burnt.

    2    (handle) all that waste, methods to recover and reuse the material are intended as an active response to the future risks by researchers and start-up companies. Much of their focus is on chemical recycling,     3     the material is broken down into its building blocks and applied to create new materials, including fibres that     4     (weave) into new clothes. The challenges lie in     5     (develop) the processes for such treatment. They have to be practical, but they also have to be at least as cost-effective as simply making new fibres.

    6     the natural cellulose fibres from cotton, some other materials include human-made cellulosic fibres. They are derived from wood-pulp cellulose and may be used to produce materials such as viscose (rayon) and a similar material called lyocell.

A change in the manufacturing process is being applied to the textile-waste problem by Essen, a start-up in Seattle, Washington.     7     the company has fundamentally devoted to the process is that it uses discarded textiles, instead of wood, as the source of its cellulose. It has also adjusted the process to produce a fibre that the firm’s co-founder and president Christo Stan says is superior to     8     other cellulosics and cotton, and that can be recycled more times.

Although there are abundant technical challenges, the main barrier     9     widespread textile recycling could be economic, says materials engineer Lijiang Jiang at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “Most of the materials are not that invaluable,” Jiang says. So cheap it is to produce polyester, cotton and other fabrics     10     there’s little profit margin unless the recycling processes themselves are very inexpensive.

5 . It took brave European explorers less than 300 years, between 1420 and 1713, to establish that all the seas of the world formed an enormous and continuous ocean. This discovery encouraged them to _____ into areas which hadn’t been charted until then. With the discovery of new lands, new trade routes were _____. In many parts of the world, colonies and settlements were established and many odd-looking products were brought back to _____, arousing great interest and _____ wealth.

It was probably the irresistible desire for wealth that _____ persuaded Europeans of the fifteenth century to _____ their legendary dangers and explore further out into the open seas. They were also _____ by the love for their countries. Many explorers wanted to serve their kings and countries as well as gain personal _____ from their exploring.

The most effective way of gaining wealth was through _____. Silk, gold, silver and ______ stones, and more importantly spices, such as gingers and peppers, were the most profitable trade goods in Europe. Spices were of the greatest ______ because they enabled the Europeans to make their winter diet of salted meat more delicious. These items were ______ mostly from the East by a difficult overland route. The Italian ______, who bought goods from the Arabs of Alexandria, controlled the trade along this route. Other countries of the Mediterranean ______ the wealth which this trade generated and they were ______ to discover new routes which would allow them to share in it.

6 . In 1985, scientists reported a change in the atmosphere, a hole or thinning of ozone (臭氧) over Antarctica. Scientists were not sure what was causing.

Most scientists believe that man-made chemicals are destroying the ozone. They also have found signs of ozone loss in other parts of the atmosphere.

Ozone is found both in the air we breathe and in the upper atmosphere. Near the earth, ozone in the air is a danger to life. It is a waste product. But ozone found 10 to 50 kilometres up in the atmosphere protects life on earth. Ozone forms in the atmosphere through the action of solar radiation (太阳辐射). Once formed, the ozone blocks harmful radiation from reaching the earth. Scientists say a reduction in ozone and an increase in the harmful radiation will cause many more cases of skin cancer and will harm crops, animals and fishes.

The report said it is about 8 degrees colder 15 kilometres above earth than it was in 1979. Scientists think the first loss of ozone reduces the amount of solar energy the atmosphere can take in. This cools the atmosphere, increases ice cloud production and leads to more ozone loss.

Scientists found signs the ozone problem has spread. The study shows that the loss of ozone over the areas with larger population in North America and Europe was at least three times greater than scientists had thought. The ozone levels reduced much more seriously during winter months than in warmer months. This is not surprising because the amount of ozone in the atmosphere changes with the temperature.

An international effort is being made to stop the loss of ozone in the atmosphere. But many experts fear that the effort will not produce results fast enough to prevent harm to life on the earth.

7 . How to save planet earth

Have you ever held a product in your hands and considered the existential weight of your purchase? Beyond each price tag hides a ripple effect. It expands from soil to water ways, grocery aisle to kitchen plates, factories to fulfillment centers and mail slots to landfills. This global impact has become less hidden in the past decade, and ignoring the people downstream from us has grown increasingly difficult.

We’re more aware than ever of the mark our consumption leaves on planet Earth, which now sustains nearly 8 billion people. Somehow, humans are still pumping more than 30 gig a tons of carbon dioxide(CO₂)per year into the atmosphere, despite the mountain of evidence that CO₂ is the top contributor to greenhouse gases causing global warming.     1    We know we need to do better, but we feel helpless and overwhelmed. Let’s call this the eco-essential crisis; it applies on a deeply personal level for most environmentally aware humans, and on a global scale.

Climate journalist and author Tatiana Schlossberg says even a simple trip to the supermarket can feel paralyzing in 2021. “I want to buy the local thing, but it’s not organic. Or, maybe it’s in a plastic box,” she says. In her 2019 book Inconspicuous Consumption, she ventures way beyond the store aisle and into the web of less apparent ways that humans are damaging Earth. For example, your internet use is tied to extensive carbon emissions and energy consumption.     2     The world is more complicated than that.

In fact, being a good citizen on planet Earth with climate concerns, you’ve likely asked or agonized over this question: What should I do?     3     So, we took this question to five people who have immersed their careers, research and writing in the realities of climate science.

One of their most consistent insights may surprise you: Consumer responsibility misses the mark. “One of the major failings of the environmental movement is having everyone focus on these small things that everyone can do.” says Ayana Elizabeth Johnson-a marine biologist and co-host of the podcast How to Save a Planet.     4     There are just more meaningful and long-lasting ways to expend your energy in the climate fight. Most of them involve organization and collective action.

“Individuals join together to collectively have far more power changing the system than they can as individuals,” says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Public Opinion Counts

Modbury is a typical small town of the south of England with a population of about 1,600. Typical, that is, apart from the fact that there are no plastic carrier bags in the town. None. Plastic bags have been well and truly dumped!

The removal of the plastic bags was the brainchild of Rebecca Hosking, Modbury resident and documentary-maker. Filming a documentary in the Pacific Ocean, Rebecca was horrified at the effects of plastic bags on the wildlife off Hawaii. Among other things, she saw seabirds fatally trapped in plastic bags that don’t biodegrade. When Rebecca returned to her hometown, she discussed this problem with people, including the shopkeepers and everyone supported her suggestion to make the town plastic bag free.

But for Rebecca’s concept, Modbury would still be an unremarkable little place. Now, however, shoppers take re-usable cotton bags shopping with them, or they buy biodegradable corn starch ones on the shops. The shopkeepers now wrap their goods in paper. To prove that the townsfolk are not only committed to reducing plastic waste, they organised a mass beach clean-up last year. Dozens of volunteers came to the beach on the appointed day to clean it up, taking the rubbish that visitors throw away and recycling it. And the greatest part of that rubbish was... no, not plastic bags, but plastic bottles.

Becoming the first town in Europe to ban plastic bags, Modbury is now harvesting the rewards of fame — reporters and camera crews from newspapers and TV channels across the world are coming to this mild town to find out its secret. And, contrary to some of the initial reports, it is a normal town, trying to live life in a slightly different way. As one resident put it. “We’re ordinary people, but we want to make just a little difference.”