Solving the Problem of E-Waste
One of the problems damaging our planet is the number of things we throw away. A more recent addition to the list of things we chuck away is e-waste - electronic items that are broken and not recycled.
Tonnes of televisions, phones, and other electronic equipment are discarded chiefly because we lack the skills to repair them. Fortunately, now solutions are being found to give e-waste a new life.
There's a growing trend for repair events and clubs which could be part of a solution to the growing amount of electrical and electronic junk. A Restart Project in London, is one that many found around the world. One of its volunteers, Francesco Calo, said that "this project allows you to reduce waste, extend the life of objects, and it helps people who cannot afford to get rid of items that have developed a fault.
As many electrical items contain valuable metals, another idea is e-waste mining. An experiment at the University of New South Wales involves extracting these materials from electronic appliances. It's thought that doing this could be more profitable than traditional mining.
These projects make total sense --- collections of e-waste for recycling are depressing or even decreasing" according to Ruediger Kuehr, of the United Nations University. And in countries where there is no laws, much of it just gets dumped. However, the European Union, for example, is trying to tackle the problem by insisting manufacturers have to make appliances longer-lasting and will have to supply spare parts for machines for up to 10 years.
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The Decline of Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the range of living things in an area. During the last 100 years, scientists have seen a great decline in biodiversity. Some studies show that one in eight plant species is threatened with extinction. It is estimated that 140,000 species of plants are lost each year.
Most of the extinctions in the last thousand years are due to humans. The main cause is the chopping down of tropical rain forests. Most of this destruction is done to create pasture (牧场) for beef cattle. Many rainforests in Central and South America have been burnt down to make way for cattle farming, which supplies beef to the rest of the world. It is estimated that for each pound of beef produced, 200 square feet of rainforest are destroyed. The forests are also cut down to make wheat for bread as well as fruit for human consumption.
The introduction of exotic (外来的) species is another threat. The latest research from the University of Southampton has revealed the impact of exotic species upon native wildlife, which could potentially lead to the extinctions of local species. When exotic species are introduced to a place, they try to establish a self-sustaining population. While the local species, which haven’t had a chance to evolve, often lack defenses and thus cannot compete against the exotic species.
The disappearance of certain food animals can be disastrous not only to larger animals but also to the entire ecosystem. It is these small creatures which convert much of the energy in an ecosystem from unusable (i.e. microscopic plants, decaying matter, etc.) into usable forms, namely their bodies. Their absence makes most energy and nutrients trapped in forms unusable to other species. This makes the environment less suitable for healthy living, and less capable of producing resources that humans need.
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近几年，各大科技公司纷纷推出配备有多种智能操控系统的仿生机器狗（robot dogs），被称为“人类高质量宠物”。有人认为，智能宠物的市场潜力巨大，随着技术的精进，它们会代替真实宠物，成为人类的好伙伴和好管家。面对机器宠物和真实宠物，你会如何选择，请通过比较阐述你的选择的理由。
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In the past two hundred years, people have caused many kinds of animals to die out. People keep building houses and factories in fields and woods. As they spread over the land, they destroy animals’ homes. If animals can’t find a place to live, they die out. Sixteen kinds of Hawaiian birds have become extinct for this reason. Other animals, such as the Florida Key deer, may soon die out because they are losing their homes. Hunters have caused some animals to become extinct, too. In the last century, hunters killed all the passenger pigeons in North America and most of the buffaloes（水牛）.
Pollution is killing many animals today, too. As rivers become polluted, fish are poisoned. Many die. Birds that eat the poisoned fish can’t lay strong, healthy eggs. New birds aren’t born. So far, no animals have become extinct because of pollution. But some, such as the bald eagle （白头鹫）and the brown pelican（鹈鹕）, have become rare and may die out.
Scientists think that some animals become extinct because of changes in climate. The places where they live become hotter or cooler, drier or wetter. The food that they eat cannot grow there anymore. If the animals can’t learn to eat something else, they die. Dinosaurs （恐龙）may have died out for this reason.
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Bears and humans often meet in National Parks. Although campers and hikers are warned not to fed the bears, many people ignore these warning and feed the beasts anyway. When bears are used to people's food, problems soon arise.
Bears like to cat a large variety of things, both meat and vegetable. Without human assistance, bears live nicely on roots, twigs, leaves of trees, insects and small animals. With people around, the bears’ tastes quickly expand to in-chide sandwiches, hot dogs, hamburgers, and anything else they can temp humans into giving up.
Bears often develop clever strategics for getting people to let go their food supplies. More often than not, an unsuspecting hiker has taken off his or her pack for a rest only to have a bear charge out of the woods, grab the pack and quickly disappear into the underbrush with it. Hanging the pack on a tree branch won't help. Bears have been known to climb up, jump off, and catch the pack on the way down. One mother bear stretched up with her baby on her shoulders to reach a pack stored on a pole. Many bears threaten people into giving up their supplies. Although a bear is unlikely to attack a person and would probably run away if screamed at, few people are willing to do so. Most people drop the pack and run the other way. This, of course, delights the bear.
In some places, the Park Service installed some metal barrels with lids to help campers keep their supplies safe from bears. Although the bears were unable to open these containers, the effort was less than successful. Most campers, unable to tell the metal drums from rubbish cans, never used them for the intended purpose.
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Unshellfish love
Amid a slump in tourism, one national park in Thailand has seen a dramatic rise in visitors. So numerous are the hermit crabs thronging the otherwise empty beaches of Koh Lanta that shells for them to live in have become a scarce commodity. The Thai government moved quickly to ease the housing shortage, launching a public appeal for empty shells that netted over 200 kg. On December 5th these were distributed around the park in a ceremony marking the birthday of the late king, Bhumibol Adulyadej.
Hermit crabs rely on discarded shells to protect their soft bodies, moving to larger shells as they grow. On Koh Lanta and the surrounding smaller islands, their rapid increase seems to be a natural phenomenon, rather than directly related to the absence of tourists. But the shortage of shells may be man-made; pretty ones have long been gathered to be sold as souvenirs. Crabs had begun to make do with potential death-traps such as plastic caps and bottles.
The shell drive was part of a government initiative to “restore the balance of nature”. “I have instructed all national parks to do whatever it takes,” says Varawut Silpa-archa, the minister for natural resources. His inspiration comes from the hiatus (间歇、空隙) in tourism brought on by covid-19. A ban on international visitors and the closure of national parks have helped nature rebound, bringing black-tipped reef sharks back into Thai waters and endangered leatherback turtles back onto Thai beaches. In the coastal provinces of Phang Nga and Phuket, turtles have laid the largest number of eggs for 20 years.
The government has decided to try to mimic the respite (暂缓、休息) forced on it by the coronavirus in future. From now on, all national parks will be required to close for part of the off-season and to limit the number of tourists through a reservation system when they are open. Although such restrictions mean reduced earnings from tourism in the short term, in the longer run more pristine (原始的、未开发的) parks may help to keep the tourists coming.
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如今一次性塑料制品（disposable plastic products）在我们生活中随处可见，很多人已经将其视为必不可少的生活用品。请简述使用一次性塑料制品的好处和弊端，可参考表格信息；并谈谈你对使用一次性塑料制品的建议。
Advantages | Disadvantages |
便利，卫生（hygienic adj.） | 塑料制品对人体潜在危害 |
可回收，反复利用 | 不可生物降解（not biodegradable） 威胁野生动物存活 |
用途广泛（如医疗用品） | 增大碳足迹，对环境负面影响 |
Is renting clothes greener than buying them?
Clothing rental is a hot new industry and retailers are demanding to get on board in hopes of attracting green shoppers. But is renting fashion actually more environmentally-friendly than buying it, and if so, how much more? Journalist and author Elizabeth Cline investigated this question and concluded that it’s not as sustainable as it seems.
Take shipping, for example, which has to go two ways if an item is rented — receiving and returning. Cline writes that consumer transportation has the second largest carbon footprint of our collective fashion habit after manufacturing. She writes, “An item ordered online and then returned can send out 20 kilograms of carbon each way, and increases up to 50 kilograms for rush shipping. By comparison, the carbon impact of a pair of jeans purchased from a physical store and washed and worn at home is 33.4 kilograms, according to a 2015 study by Levi’s.”
Then there’s the burden of washing, which has to happen for every item when it’s returned, regardless of whether or not it was worn. For most rental services, this usually means dry cleaning, a high impact and polluting process. All the rental services that Cline looked into have replaced perchloroethylene (氯乙烯), a carcinogenic (致癌的) air pollutant that is still used by 70 percent of US dry cleaners, with hydrocarbon alternatives, although these aren’t great either.
Lastly, Cline fears that rental services will increase our appetite for fast fashion, simply because it’s so easily accessible. There’s something called “share washing” that makes people engage in more wasteful behaviors precisely because a product or service is shared and thus is regarded as more eco-friendly. Uber is one example of this, advertised as “a way to share rides and limit car ownership.” and yet “it has been proven to discourage walking, bicycling, and public transportation use.”
Renting clothes is still preferable to buying them cheap and throwing them in the dustbin after a few wears, but we shouldn’t let the availability of these services make us too satisfied. There’s an even better step—and that’s wearing what is already in the closet.
Some scientists say that animals in the oceans are increasingly threatened by noise pollution caused by human beings.
The noise that affects sea creatures comes from a number of human activities. It is caused mainly by industrial underwater explosions, ocean drilling, and ship engines. Such noises are added to natural sounds. These sounds include the breaking of ice fields, underwater earthquakes, and sounds made by animals themselves.
Decibels (分贝) measured in water are different from those measured on land. A noise of one hundred and twenty decibels on land causes pain to human ears. In water, a decibel level of one hundred and ninety-five would have the same effect.
Some scientists have suggested setting a noise limit of one hundred and twenty decibels in oceans. They have observed that noises at that level can frighten and confuse whales.
A team of American and Canadian scientists discovered that louder noises can seriously injure some animals. The research team found that powerful underwater explosions were causing whales in the area to lose their hearing. This seriously affected the whales’ ability to exchange information and find their way. Some of the whales even died. The explosions had caused their ears to bleed and become infected (感染).
Many researchers whose work depends on ocean sounds are against a limit of one hundred and twenty decibels. They say such a limit would mean an end to important industrial and scientific research.
Scientists do not know how much and what kinds of noises are harmful to ocean animals. However, many scientists suspect that noise is a greater danger than they believed. They want to prevent noises from harming creatures in the ocean.
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Is It Possible to be Green and Fashionable?
Despite the huge numbers of people who care about the environment and love clothes, there is a basic conflict about being green and being fashionable. This is because the fashion industry depends on a constant stream of ever-changing trends, which means you have to keep consuming. However, buying a lot of things that you don’t need, in this case new clothes, is harmful to the environment. Even so, there are still some measures you can take to achieve both goals.
Firstly, rather than basing your choice of clothes on whatever the fashion industry says you should, choose your own look. If you do this, you’ll look a lot more like an individual, and probably more genuinely stylish. It does not require any sense of style to copy the looks in glossy magazines. It does require some to develop your own. You’ll find that because your clothes aren’t going in and out of fashion every week, you’ll buy fewer and this helps the environment.
Some people think that another way of achieving this is to buy only natural fabrics, like cotton. But actually the production of some plant-based fabrics involves the use of enormous quantities of pesticides. In fact, cotton is an especially dirty crop, with methods used in its cultivation which can wreck the local environment. If you want to avoid adding to soil and water pollution in this manner, simply opt for organic fabrics.
While we’re on the subject of the materials, here’s a word of warning. Try to avoid buying clothes made from animal products, especially fur. Not only will this have the effect of reducing animal suffering, it will also reduce your environmental footprint; animal products have a larger impact than plant products because they consume more resources.
In the end, what you wear is your choice and no-one would suggest that this should not be a free choice. But we hope that, having read this, you will be fully aware of the impact your choices may have on the health of our planet.
