Preserving more habitats for China’s giant pandas is providing a giant payoff.
The results,
Because of this, Chinese officials began making significant efforts to save the panda from
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2 . Ever been hungry enough to eat a house? Now, you actually could.
Food waste is a big problem in Japan and globally. Japan produced around 5.7 million tons of food waste in 2019. The government plans to reduce that by around 2.7 million tons by 2030. Tokyo University researchers Kota Machida and Yuya Sakai have developed a way to transform food waste into cement(水泥) for construction use and more. This is the first-ever process created for making cement entirely from food waste. The researchers say their product is four times as strong as traditional concrete. This particular cement can be used to make things like tea cups or chairs as well. However, there’s one additional feature — it’s also edible(可食的).
Kota and Yuya are the intelligence behind the formation of Fabula Inc., a company with purposes of reducing food waste, and helping fight global warming.
As expected, something this unique took years to develop. It took a few attempts to find just the right process. Kota and Yuya created the unique technology while researching possible environmentally-friendly materials to replace cement-based concrete. Cement production accounts for 8% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
After a few failures, they realized they could get the cement to bind(黏合) by adjusting the temperatures. “The most challenging part was that each type of food waste requires different temperatures,” Yuya said. So the researchers had to observe them and respond in time. In the experiments, Kota and Yuya have successfully made cement using tea leaves, coffee grounds, cabbage and even lunchbox leftovers.
Fabula Inc. is currently working to make tea cups and furniture, but Yuya is thinking a little bit bigger. Their product could provide relief in the form of edible emergency shelters in disaster ones. “For example, if food cannot be delivered to the people, they could eat makeshift beds made out of food cement,” he said. To eat the material, a person needs to break it apart and boil it.
1. Which is one of Kota and Yuya’s purposes in making use of food waste?| A．To handle climate change. | B．To offer Fabula Inc. more cement. |
| C．To warn how serious food waste is. | D．To extend concrete’s service life. |
| A．Its damage to the environment. | B．Its cost of recycling the cement. |
| C．Its difficulties they would face. | D．Its popularity among the public. |
| A．Making sure to make cement tasty. | B．Selecting correct food waste timely. |
| C．Getting cement broken apart easily. | D．Regulating the temperatures constantly. |
| A．Bendable. | B．Strong. | C．Temporary. | D．Commercial. |
Those who haven’t been to the Mu Us may not have an opportunity to do so. The desert is disappearing from
The Mu Us
However, the area was no desert in ancient times. It used to be grazing land
In modern times, the Mu Us, the fourth
Thanks to greening, the desert is poised to disappear. The feat(丰绩) wouldn’t have been achieved
4 . Used electronics are piing up fast: they are filling up landfills with dangerous pieces of waste. Some e-waste is relatively large, such as air conditioners; other e-waste is more unnoticed, such as smart labels that contain disposable batteries and other equipment.
“It’s these small batteries that are big problems,” says University of California, Irvine, public health scientist Dele Ogunseitan, who is a green technology researcher and adviser for major tech companies and was not involved in developing the battery. “Nobody really pays attention to where they end up.” Researchers at the Cellulose & Wood Materials Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology are working to address this problem. Their new paper describes a water-activated paper battery developed from environmentally friendly materials that could eventually present a sustainable alternative to the more harmful batteries common in low-power devices.
The paper battery has the same key components as standard batteries but packages them differently. Like a typical chemical battery, it has a positively charged side and a negatively charged side. A traditional battery’s components are covered in plastic and metal; in the new battery, however, the positively and negatively charged sides are inks printed onto the front and back of a piece of paper. That paper is filled with salt, which dissolves (溶解) when the paper becomes wet. When the paper is dry, the battery is shelf-stable. Once the paper is wet, the battery starts working within 20 seconds. The new battery’s operating performance declines as the paper dries. When the scientists rewet the paper during testing, the battery regained function and lasted an hour before beginning to dry out again.
That future may not be so far off. It is hard to predict a time line for manufacturing such items at scale, but the head of the study says he is in contact with potential industry partners and believes these batteries could make their way into products within the next two to five years.
1. Why is e-waste mentioned in paragraph 1?| A．To introduce the topic. | B．To give people warning. |
| C．To show the seriousness of it. | D．To call on people to take action. |
| A．Objective. | B．Carefree. | C．Indifferent. | D．Concerned. |
| A．The difference between the paper battery and the traditional battery. |
| B．The working principle of the paper battery. |
| C．The problem of the paper battery. |
| D．The advantage of the paper battery. |
| A．Paper battery: Is it far off? |
| B．Paper can work wonders. |
| C．Paper battery: A creative way to reduce e-waste. |
| D．Let’s work together to fight e-waste. |
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6 . Last weekend, I said goodbye to another dear old friend. We had 12 fine years together, but our relationship was becoming dysfunctional(不正常的). Unwanted emissions and serious health problems were the final straw, leaving me with no choice but to make a trip to the knacker’s(收废汽车者的)yard.
I am now car-free for the first time in 20 years, and it feels strange. When I gave up meat, I did so mainly for environmental reasons, and I didn’t miss it at all. I would like to say the same about my car, but I can’t. It was first and foremost a financial decision: keeping the old car on the road was getting too expensive.
But doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still doing the right thing — I now have a chance to rethink how I move myself and my family around, and can try to find a more environmentally friendly means of transport.
Going car-free is, I think, a lifestyle change that many of us are going to make over the next few years, as car ownership becomes increasingly unnecessary, expensive and socially unacceptable. However, it is easier said than done. Now my car is gone. I still need to get around. But how? I already cycle to work and use public transport when appropriate. But there are some occasions when a car seems to be the only way.
I won’t buy one: I have joined a car-share program and will use taxis more often. I will hire a car if I need to drive a long distance. But then I am still travelling in fossil-fuelled cars(燃油汽车), like when I quit meat and ended up eating more cheese. I fear I may have swapped one environmental problem for another.
I am also afraid to think about the ultimate fate of my car. I have just offloaded more than a ton of metal, plastic, rubber, fabric, electronics, oil and petrol that will end up in a landfill. There are millions of similar vehicles in the UK alone that will have to go somewhere.
Maybe I am overthinking it. According to Charlie Wilson, a climate scientist at the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, getting rid of a private car is no doubt a positive step to reduce CO2 emissions.
He points to research by the OECD’s International Transport Forum. “They showed that moving from a private vehicle fleet(车队)to a shared vehicle fleet can greatly cut the number of vehicles you need to deliver the mobility that we need and want. If that vehicle fleet is electrified, you can also bring CO2 emissions close to zero.”
So in other words, just get rid of your car.
1. What do we know about the author’s car?| A．It was old. | B．It was green. |
| C．It was his first car. | D．It was a second-hand car. |
| A．He did both for the wrong reasons. | B．He thinks both help him save money. |
| C．He considers both are right decisions. | D．He did both out of concern for the environment. |
| A．He may have to spend more on travel. |
| B．His lifestyle might be changed completely. |
| C．He might get bored with public transportation. |
| D．His decision may fail to help the environment. |
| A．It is wise to do away with old private cars. |
| B．It is very easy to deal with old private cars. |
| C．Electric cars are the solution to traffic problems. |
| D．The OECD plays a key role in promoting car-sharing. |
7 . Research has found that using wood for construction instead of concrete and steel can reduce emissions. But Tim Searchinger at Princeton University says many of these studies are based on the false foundation that harvesting wood is carbon neutral (碳中和). “Only a small percentage of the wood gets into a timber (木料) product, and a part of that gets into a timber product that can replace concrete and steel in a building,” he says. Efficiencies vary in different countries, but large amounts of a harvested tree are left to be divided into parts, used in short-lived products like paper or burned for energy, all of which generate emissions.
In a report for the World Resources Institute, Searchinger and his colleagues have modelled how using more wood for construction would affect emissions between 2010 and 2050, accounting for the emissions from harvesting the wood. They considered various types of forests and parts of wood going towards construction. They also factored in the emissions savings from replacing concrete and steel.
Under some circumstances, the researchers found significant emissions reductions. But each case required what they considered an unrealistically high portion of the wood going towards construction, as well as rapid growth only seen in warmer places, like Brazil. In general, they found a large increase in global demand for wood would probably lead to rising emissions for decades. Accounting for emissions in this way, the researchers reported in a related paper that increasing forest harvests between 2010 and 2050 would add emissions equal to roughly 10 percent of total annual emissions.
Ali Amiri at Aalto University in Finland says the report’s conclusions about emissions from rising demand are probably correct, but the story is different for wood we already harvest. “Boosting the efficiency of current harvests and using more wood for longer-lived purposes than paper would cut emissions,” he says. “We cannot just say we should stop using wood.”
1. What is wrong with previous researches according to Searchinger?| A．They got wrong statistics. | B．They used an incorrect concept. |
| C．They included too many factors. | D．They were applied in limited countries. |
| A．The process of the new research. | B．The background of the new study. |
| C．The challenge of the new research. | D．The achievements of the new study. |
| A．When wood grows slowly. |
| B．When wood is largely used to make paper. |
| C．When wood is largely used in construction in countries like Brazil. |
| D．When wood is largely harvested in countries like Brazil. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Doubtful. | C．Critical. | D．Objective. |
8 . Are you a tea drinker? If so, you’re not alone. Every day around the world millions of cups of this popular brew are drunk, and it’s been that way for thousands of years. The oldest discovered tea is from the Han Dynasty, dating from 206BC to 220AD. But it’s thought that the tea trend really took off during the Tang Dynasty in the 8th Century, when it became China’s national drink. Now, Turkey, the Republic of Ireland and the UK are believed to be the biggest tea—drinking nations, per capita.
Tea is consumed in many ways-slurped, sipped or glugged. It can be poured from pots, infused or brewed in the cup using tea bags—and it’s this latter process that is causing concern. Research last year found some premium tea bags might be leaving billions of microscopic plastic particles in the cup. Scientists from McGill University in Montreal found that some ‘plastic’ tea bags shed high levels of micro plastics into water. However, The World Health Organization says such particles in drinking water do not appear to pose a risk.
Most tea bags are made from paper, with a small amount of plastic used to seal them shut— made from oil. This has led to debate about whether they can be recycled, but many are still composted. However, gardener Mike Armitage has told the BBC that the plastic contained in the soil could be washed into streams and rivers and ultimately out to sea.
Unilever, the owners of the tea brand PG Tips, said their tea bags are made with a small amount of plastic—used to seal them—and that they are suitable for composting. And the brand Yorkshire Tea said their bags do contain 25% polypropylene, but they were “actively developing plant—based and biodegradable alternatives”.
While tea bag manufacturers might be doing their bit to reduce plastic pollution, it could be a good time to switch your favourite beverage to coffee, or if that isn’t your cup of tea then try using loose-leaf tea, which can have a better flavour.
1. What is the main idea of paragraph 2?| A．Tea can be consumed in many ways. |
| B．The use of tea bags doesn’t appear to pose a risk |
| C．The use of tea bags is causing concern. |
| D．Some tea bags might be leaving microscopic plastic particles in the cup. |
| A．reduce the amount of plastic used to seal tea bags |
| B．wash the plastic in the soil into streams, rivers and sea |
| C．develop plant-based and biodegradable alternatives |
| D．switch to coffee or try to use loose-leaf tea |
| A．Supportive | B．Indifferent | C．Opposed | D．Neutral |
| A．Potential Plastic Pollution |
| B．Chinese tea culture |
| C．What is your favorite drink? |
| D．The Humble tea bag |
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参考词汇： 生物多样性biology-diversity
Dear schoolmates,
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The School English Club
10 . The World Health Organization warns that millions of people are dying every year from indoor air pollution. Nearly three billion people are unable to use clean fuels and technologies for cooking, heating as well as lighting.
These findings show that the use of deadly fuels in inefficient stoves, space heaters or lights is to blame for many of these deaths.
WHO officials say indoor pollution leads to early deaths from stroke, heart and lung disease, childhood pneumonia and lung cancer. Women and girls are the main victims. These diseases can often result from the burning of solid fuels. These fuels include wood, coal, animal waste, crop waste and charcoal.
The United Nations found that more than 95 percent of households in sub-Saharan Africa depend on solid fuels for cooking. It says huge populations in India, China and Latin American countries, such as Guatermala and Peru,are also at risk.
Nigel Brace is a professor of Public Health at the University of Liverpool. He says researchers are developing good cook-stoves and other equipment to burn fuels in a more efficient way.There are already multiple technologies available for use in clean fuels.There is really quite an effective and reasonably low-cost alcohol stove made by Dometic (a Sweden-based company) that is now being tested out. LPG (Liquefield Petroleum Gas) cook is obviously widely available and efforts are under way to make those efficient. Another interesting development is electric induction stoves. WHO experts note that some new, safe and low-cost technologies that could help are already available. In India, you can buy an induction stove for about $8.00. And in Africa you can buy a solar lamp for less than $1.00.
But this,the agency says, is just a start. It is urging developing countries to use cleaner fuels and increase access to cleaner and more modern cooking and heating appliances/devices.
1. What does the indoor pollution mainly result from?| A．Poisonous fuels. | B．High technology. | C．Space heaters. | D．Solar energy. |
| A．By showing differences. | B．By describing a process. |
| C．By making a list. | D．By analyzing data. |
| A．Indoor pollution results in some deaths. |
| B．Most of the deaths are in developing countries. |
| C．The solid fuels are used in more effective ways. |
| D．There is no indoor pollution in developed countries. |
| A．LPG cooks are being tested out. | B．Alcohol stoves are widely used now. |
| C．Electric induction stoves are expensive. | D．Solar lamps are very cheap in Africa. |
