1 . Since the 1950s, some 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced globally, of which only about 10% has ever been recycled. Yet environmentally conscious companies and consumers continue to look to recycling as a way to ease the plastic problem. Manufacturing giants claim to be committed to making more of their products and packaging from recycled materials. However, this confidence masks (掩饰) a complex web of issues around plastic recycling. Recycling rates remain extremely low and critics argue that we should look at alternative ways to tackle plastic pollution.

While many plastics have the potential to be recycled, most are not because the process is costly, complicated and the resulting product of a lower quality than the original. Despite rising demand for recycled plastic, few waste companies turn a profit. Part of this is because virgin plastic—linked to oil prices—is often cheaper than recycled plastic, meaning there is little economic motive to use it. Worse yet, much of our plastic waste is difficult to recycle. Lightweight food packaging, like a mozzarella packet, contains different plastics, dyes and toxic additives (添加剂). This dirty mix means plastic recycled through mechanical methods—the most common form—can only be melted down and moulded again a couple of times before it becomes too fragile to be reused. And the nature of the process means plastic recycling has a carbon footprint of its own.

Given all of these difficulties, environmental critics say recycling is not the solution and argue that creating more products from recycled material to attract environmental consciousness merely worsens the problem. “The solution is to use less plastic and to stop misleading the public about the recyclability,” says Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a US campaign group with a mission to end single-use plastic. “They should stop making false claims about the recyclability of plastics since they know most will either be littered or burned or landfilled (填埋). Using less plastics means shifting to reusable products and relying more on paper, cardboard, glass and metal—all of which should be made from recycled content.”

3 . I fell in love with Yosemite National Park the first time I saw it. I went there for camping with my parents. On the way out, I asked them to wait while I ran up to EI Capitan, a huge rock of 3, 300 feet straight up. I touched that ________ rock and knew immediately I wanted to ________ it. That has been my life’s ________ ever since—climbing the rocks and mountains of Yosemite. I’ve long made Yosemite my home.

About 7 years ago I started seeing a lot of waste,________ beer cans, empty boxes, around the area. It’s beyond me why visitors started respecting the place less and treated such a beautiful ________ place this way.

I made an attempt to clean the place myself, but the job was too ________. I would spend an hour or two on the job, only to find the area trashed all over again weeks later. Finally, I got so tired of it that I had to ________ an idea to change the situation.

In 2018, together with some climbers, I set a ________ for a cleanup. On that day, more than 300 people appeared there. Over three days we ________ about 6,000 pounds of trash. It was ________ how much we were able to achieve. I couldn’t believe the difference we made—the ________ looked clean!

Each year these climbers come for the ________ from everywhere. In 2022 alone, 2,945 people picked up 42,330 pounds of trash.

There are many people around us who are ________ with their surroundings. If you are one of them, I would say the only way to change things is by ________ rather than complaining. We need to teach by example. After all, everybody has his ________ to protect the environment.

6 . There once was an ordinary street in the suburbs where no one cared much for their gardens. The lawns were overgrown, the weeds were taking over and the hedges(树篱)_________ needed to be cut back. It looked very terrible. _________ when the neighbors saw their gardens, they just looked at each other and laughed.

It seemed too hard to clear all the gardens and no one could be _________ to make them better because everyone’s garden was equally _________. No one felt it was urgent to change anything. Then a gardener named Bill _________ in the small town. Bill was a _________, hard-working and patient man who started working in the garden as soon as he moved in the street. He took his lawn mower(割草机) out to cut back the grass and pulled out all of the _________. Finally, he took up his gardening and started _________ his hedges, making them look like flowers, plants, stones, balls, etc. It was a huge project but his hard work _________ and his garden looked inviting.

__________ by the beautiful scenery, the neighbors walked by and admired the __________ manicured(修整的) garden. Before long, something __________ happened. One by one, the neighbors started to put in more effort in their own gardens and the sounds of lawn mowers could be heard again. After a few months, the street was transformed from a dirty, __________ collection of houses to a beautiful street that wouldn’t be out of place in a stylish magazine.

One person’s action showed everyone what could be achieved with a little hard work. It’s easy for us to __________ the environment around us because no one else cares about it. Remember what you positively do not only benefits yourself, but also __________ a change to the whole world.

7 . Children are more creative when they learn in natural surroundings, according to new research from Curtin University. Primary school students in Australia and England were put to the test to see whether writing poetry in a natural outdoor setting produced more creative outcomes than writing in a classroom, and the answer was yes.

Dr Paul Gardner and Sonja Kuzich from Curtin’s School of Education ran relative trials with 10-year-old students in both countries and the results, recently published in the Cambridge Journal of Education, gave a big thumbs-up to the positive influence of natural settings. “We found that students who had direct contact with nature by immersing (沉浸) themselves in a bush or forest setting were much more descriptive and vivid in the language they used than the classroom-based writers who ‘imagined’ being in nature through photos,” Dr Gardner said.

In total, 97 students took part in the study, divided into four classrooms, including two based at an English primary school and two from a primary school in Western Australia. In each country one class visited a natural bush or forest before writing a poem based on what they saw, smelt and felt. The other class viewed a pile of images of the same bush or forest setting.

Ms Kuzich said the difference in creative language used between the classes was obvious with twice as many UK forest students using figurative (比喻的) language compared with the class-based students. In Australia that figure rose to more than four times when comparing the poetry of the forest-based students with those who remained at school.

The researchers say further studies of larger groups are now recommended to a gain greater understanding of the influence of natural spaces and “green learning” in schools.

10 . Wood stork, which was on the brink of extinction in 1984, has recovered enough in Florida and other Southern states. The American wildlife officials proposed removing the waterfowl (水禽) from the endangered species list.

This symbolic species, which is the only stork native to North America, has rebounded (反弹) because dedicated partners in the southeast have worked tirelessly to restore ecosystems that support it. In addition, the wood stork has increased its range in coastal areas. The birds have adapted to new nesting areas, tripling the number of colonies across their range from 29 to 99 in recent years.

Credit goes mainly to the wildlife protections provided by the Endangered Species Act(ESA), which can impose restrictions on a variety of activities in areas where such species are, located, such as development, mining and oil drilling. The act saved the wood stork and it helped; preserve and rebuild vital habitats throughout the southeast, which has improved water quality and benefited countless other species who call the area home. The Endangered Species Act has saved 99% of the species that have been on the list since 1973, with 100 types of plants and animals delisted because they have recovered or are at least stable.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that restoration of the wood stork’s habitat, especially in the Florida Everglades and adjacent Big Cypress National Preserve, led to a, sharp increase in breeding pairs. Those numbers had shrunk to just 5,000 pairs in 1984, whereas there are more than 10,000 pairs today.

“The proposed delisting of the wood stork is a significant milestone and a remarkable, achievement of the hard work by federal agencies, state and local governments, tribes, conservation organizations, and private citizens in protecting and restoring our most at-risk species,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said.

If the wood stork is delisted, officials said it would remain protected by other laws including the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Clean Water Act. A monitoring plan, would be put in place for at least five years to ensure the stork population remains stable.