Cleaning your plate may not help feed hungry children today, but the timeworn (陈旧的) advice of mothers everywhere may help reduce food waste from the farm to the fork and make it     1    (easy) to feed the world's     2    (grow) population. Hard data is still being collected, but experts in Chicago say that each American     3    (throw) away 33 pounds of food each month, which means everyone throws away almost 400 pounds of food every year. In richer nations, fruits and vegetables end up in the trash because they aren’t pretty enough     4    (meet) standards, and have gone bad in a home refrigerator. In developing countries, much food goes wrong     5     it gets to the market because of poor roads. But the effect of food waste is far     6    the kitchen. Agriculture is the world's largest     7    (consume) of water, a big consumer of energy. No matter     8    sustainable (可持续的) farming is, if the food is not eaten, it means we don’t make good use of our resources.   In     9     (real), the resources we could use have decreased     10    (sharp). All of us have responsibility for it.

3 . The LEGO Group, whose plastic building toys are familiar to many people, has been working on making LEGO bricks out of recycled plastic. The bricks aren't ready yet, but the company says it's making progress.

Since roughly 1960, LEGO bricks have been made from ABS plastic which makes LEGO bricks very tough and gives them great clutch power so that the things users build don't fall apart easily. Sadly, ABS plastic can't really be recycled and it takes an extremely long time to break down.

However, since 2015, LEGO has been trying to make earth-friendly products. Making bricks from recycled materials could cut pollution from the company's bricks by 70%. But making bricks out of recycled plastic is challenging. The goal is to make bricks out of PET plastic, which is softer than ABS plastic and can be found in things like bottles and clothing. A recycled one-liter plastic bottle could make about ten 2×4 LEGO bricks. Over the past three years, the company has tested over 250 different ways of creating LEGO bricks from recycled plastic. A team of more than 150 people are working on the problem. Tim Brooks,who focuses on environmental responsibility at LEGO, says that experimenting and failing is “an important part of learning”.

Now, the company says they can make a good 2×4 brick from PET. One important step was finding a way of adding things to PET plastic to make it tougher and give it better clutch power like ABS. They will also work on shaping bricks into other forms and adding color to them-right now they are just white. The bricks will go through many different tests, which will take at least a year.

The company aims to make all their main products out of sustainable materials by the year 2030. “We know kids care about the environment and we want to tell them we're working on it.” said Mr. Brooks.

4 . A project in Kenya is using biogas (沼气) technology to attack two major pollution problems with one device: a machine that changes waste such as invasive water hyacinth (入侵性水葫芦) into cleaner cooking fuel.

The project from Biogas International, a Kenyan energy technology company, has so far provided 50 of the Flexi Biogas devices to homes in the city of Kisumu in western Kenya. The main device is called a digester (浸煮器) because it breaks down plant waste to produce gas. The digesters will permit families to stop using wood or coal, both of which produce dangerous smoke. People will also be able to cook foods faster using the gas. Tony Otieno used the gas from a digester to cook tea for his 70-year-old grandmothet Margaret. He said, "The gas has no smoke, does not smell, and it is much faster than the jiko (a stove that uses wood-coal)."

Some of the families received a gas stove as part of the project, to replace their jiko. The machines process plant waste such as water hyacinth. That plan has covered large parts of Lake Victoria. The weed-like plant harms living things in the lake including fish. The plant also helps bacteria and mosquitoes increase, causing health risks to local communities.

Dominic Wanjihia Kahumbu is head of Biogas International. He said that at a cost of $650, most families in the city do not have enough money to buy the device. Although the technology can be on a small or large scale, he said, each system costs a lot to make. As a result, it is unlikely that the company will make a profit for at least another five years. He said the company needs new investment.

Two larger versions of the equipment are still in the testing stage. They would produce clean fuel on an larger scale for restaurants, chicken farms and fish drying facilities in the area.

7 . Glacier National Park in Montana shares boundaries with Canada, an American Indian reservation, and a national forest. Along the North Fork of the Flathead River, the park also covers about 17, 000 acres of private lands that are currently used for ranching(牧场)and agriculture. This land is an important part of the habitat and migratory area in which several endangered species live. These private lands are essentially the only ones available for development in the region.

With encouragement from the park, local landowners initiated a land use planning effort to guide the future of the North Fork. The park is a partner in an inter local agreement that calls for resource-managing agencies to work together and with the more than 400 private owners in the area. A draft plan has been prepared, with objective of maintaining traditional economic uses but limiting new development that would damage park resources. Voluntary action by landowners, in cooperation with the park and the county, is helping to restrict small productions, maintain wildlife habitats, and minimize any harmful impact on the environment.

The willingness of local landowners to participate in this protection effort may have been stimulated by concerns that Congress would impose a legislative solution. Nevertheless, many local residents want to save the existing character of the area. Meetings between park officials and landowners have led to a dramatically improved understanding of all concerns.

9 . An Ontario teen is making waves by turning old fishing gear into new treasures. Since last year, Natalie, 15, has been taking lost or thrown — away fishing nets and rope and transforming them into bracelets, rope art, mats, baskets and necklaces.

Last year, Natalie was working on an assignment for her science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) class. As part of the assignment, she learned about “ghost nets”, which are fishing nets that have been left or lost in the ocean by people who fish.

“They have huge effects on our environment. They can kill coral reefs and many animals,” said Natalie. “46 percent of the Pacific garbage is ghost gear.” The Great Pacific Garbage is a huge collection of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and California.

Natalie told her mom she wanted to do something to help. She got in touch with a handful of charities, including the Sea Protection Society and Coastal Action.

After getting some shipments of ghost nets and rope from those organizations, Natalie, with the help of her family, started turning the discarded gear into new artworks. “We've made bracelets, rope art, mats, baskets, and we've made necklaces, which also use beach glass in them,” she said. Natalie then started selling the artworks online, the crafty buying and selling website.

She donated all her profits-minus a small sum of change to cover supplies — to the charities that donated fishing supplies to her. She's also been donating all the income from her non-profit business, called Nautical Waters, to charity. Natalie said she hoped to continue her passion for ocean life, with plans to study marine biology in university.

10 . The good news is that more people bought electric vehicles （EVs） in 2020. The bad news is that sport utility （多用途的）vehicles （SUVs） continued to grow in popularity, too. “The fall in oil consumption due to the first trend was completely canceled out by the second," said Laura Cozzi, an officer at the International Energy Agency （JEA）,

Between 2010 and 2020, global carbon dioxide emissions （排放）from conventional cars fell by nearly 35 billion Lons, due to reasons such as fuel efficiency improvements as well as the switch to electric cars. Emissions from SUVs rose by more than 50 billion tons. "While the growth in EVs is encouraging, the boom in SUVs is heart-breaking," says Peters at the Cicero Climate Research Centre in Norway.

There are many reasons for the growing popularity of SUVs. For example, rising economic boom in many countries means more people are able to afford them. Some people see them as status symbols. Also, SUVs are heavily advertised by car-makers, whose profit is higher on these vehicles. Some countries, including France, have introduced plans under which more taxes are paid on heavier cars. But Peters thinks that people who are rich enough to afford SUVs won't be deterred by slightly higher taxes. "There are now some electric SUVs available, but 1 hope one day you will see more electric vehicles brought to the SUV market," says Peters.

Even if it happens, switching to electric SUVs isn't a good solution. Due to their size and bigger batteries, it takes more resources to build electric SUVs, and they consume around 15 percent more electricity. That means higher emissions unless the electricity comes entirely from renewable sources, and higher electricity demand makes it harder to green the electricity supply.