1 . There are energy savings to be made from all recyclable materials, sometimes huge savings. Recycling plastics and aluminum, for instance, uses only 5% to 10% as much energy as producing new plastic or smelting (提炼) aluminum.
Long before most of us even noticed what we now call “the environment”, Buckminster Fuller said, “Pollution is nothing but the resources (资源) we are not harvesting. We allow them to be left around because we’ve been ignorant of their value.” To take one example, let’s compare the throwaway economy with a recycling economy as we feed a cat for life.
Say your cat weigh 5kg and eats one can of food each day. Each empty can of its food weights 40g. In a throwaway economy, you would throw away 5,475 cans over the cats 15-year lifetime. That’s 219kg of steel — more than a fifth of a ton and more than 40 times the cat’s weight.
In a recycling economy, we would make one set of 100 cans to start with, then replace them over and over again with recycled cans. Since almost 3% of the metal is lost during reprocessing, we’d have to make an extra 10 cans each year. But in all, only 150 cans will be used up over the cat’s lifetime — and we’ll still have 100 left over for the next cat.
Instead of using up 219kg of steel, we’ve used only 6kg. And because the process of recycling steel is less polluting than making new steel, we’ve also achieved the following significant savings:in energy use — 47% to 74%; in air pollution — 85%; in water pollution — 35%; in water use — 40%.
1. What does Buckminster Fuller say about pollution?| A．It is becoming more serious. | B．It is the resources yet to be used. |
| C．It destroys the environment. | D．It benefits the economy. |
| A．50. | B．100. | C．150. | D．250. |
| A．To introduce an environmentalist. | B．To promote the idea of recycling. |
| C．To discuss the causes of pollution. | D．To defend the throwaway economy. |
| A．A novel. | B．A fiction. | C．Sports column of newspaper. | D．A magazine. |
2 . Like most of us, I try to be mindful of food that goes to waste. The arugula (芝麻菜)was to make a nice green salad, rounding out a roast chicken dinner. But I ended up working late. Then friends called with a dinner invitation. I stuck the chicken in the freezer. But as days passed, the arugula went bad. Even worse, I had unthinkingly bought way too much; I could have made six salads with what I threw out.
In a world where nearly 800 million people a year go hungry, “food waste goes against the moral grain,” as Elizabeth Royte writes in this month’s cover story. It’s jaw-dropping how much perfectly good food is thrown away — from “ugly” (but quite eatable) vegetables rejected by grocers to large amounts of uneaten dishes thrown into restaurant garbage cans.
Producing food that no one eats wastes the water, fuel, and other resources used to grow it. That makes food waste an environmental problem. In fact, Royte writes, “if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world.”
If that’s hard to understand, let’s keep it as simple as the arugula at the back of my refrigerator. Mike Curtin sees my arugula story all the time — but for him, it's more like 12 bones of donated strawberries nearing their last days. Curtin is CEO of DC Central Kitchen in Washington, D.C., which recovers food and turns it into healthy meals. Last year it recovered more than 807,500 pounds of food by taking donations and collecting blemished (有瑕疵的) produce that otherwise would have rotted in fields. And the strawberries? Volunteers will wash, cut, and freeze or dry them for use in meals down the road.
Such methods seem obvious, yet so often we just don’t think. “Everyone can play a part in reducing waste, whether by not purchasing more food than necessary in your weekly shopping or by asking restaurants to not include the side dish you won’t eat,” Curtin says.
1. What does the author want to show by telling the arugula story?| A．We pay little attention to food waste. | B．We waste food unintentionally at times. |
| C．We waste more vegetables than meat. | D．We have good reasons for wasting food. |
| A．Moral decline. | B．Environmental harm. |
| C．Energy shortage. | D．Worldwide starvation. |
| A．It produces kitchen equipment. | B．It turns rotten arugula into clean fuel. |
| C．It helps local farmers grow fruits. | D．It makes meals out of unwanted food. |
| A．Buy only what is needed. | B．Reduce food consumption. |
| C．Go shopping once a week. | D．Eat in restaurants less often. |
3 . In the United States, farmers who are trying to earn money find the situation difficult to deal with. The United States Department of Agriculture found that more than half of the small farms in California do not make money. But the United Nations reported at least one third of the food is wasted by not selling it out in time.
One California farm family is using social media to change the situation and reduce wasted food. Nick Papadopoulos is the manager of Bloomfield Farms in Sonoma County. He was sad and worried to watch his employees returning from some weekend farmers’ markets with top quality unsold products.
Mr. Papadopoulos said he would find boxes of leaf greens and carrots left in a storehouse. The vegetables would go bad before the next market day. One night, he began thinking about the matter of wasted food when he didn’t know how to deal with 32 cases of broccoli (西兰花). Usually he would give it to chickens and use the rest to make fertilizer (肥料). He thought he shouldn’t let the farm products go to waste.
Then his daughter showed him a book she bought online. Suddenly it hit him that he could offer the food at a low price by advertising it on the farm’s Facebook page on Sunday nights. The deals were open to anyone using the social media website. In the first week, some neighbors came to his home to buy the vegetables. Another week, the buyers were a group of friends. And now many people wait to buy his cheap products.
After his success, Mr. Papadopoulos helped to set up a website called cropmobster. com, which is a place where people deal with food production at low prices, feeding the hungry. Since March, the website has stopped more than 20, 000 kilograms of food from going to waste.
1. According to the United Nations, much food is wasted mainly because .| A．there is too much food | B．the food can’t be sold out |
| C．the food isn’t of good quality | D．the prices of the food are high |
| A．On weekend markets. | B．On a food website. |
| C．In the supermarkets. | D．Beside his farms. |
| A．Gave them to the poor. |
| B．Sold them at lower prices. |
| C．Put them in a storehouse for the next chance. |
| D．Gave them to chickens and turned them into fertilizer |
| A．Improving the farm products. |
| B．Improving the farmers’ incomes. |
| C．Providing cheap food for the poor. |
| D．Helping farmers sell out farm products. |
4 . Paper is one of our oldest, simplest and most important inventions. But it also presents a danger to the world in two significant ways. First, the making of paper requires the loss of millions of trees each year. Between 2001 and 2019, the world lost 386 million hectares of forest. Of the trees that were cut down, 42% went to paper production. And worldwide use of paper is expected to double in the next 40 years. Clearly, the planet cannot sustain such a high rate of forest loss.
The second great problem with paper is what happens once it is no longer useful. A huge quantity of wastepaper ends up in dumps and landfills (垃圾填埋场), where it can produce harmful gases. Paper in landfills leads to the release (释放) of methane, a gas that is a significant contributor in global warming.
One simple solution can greatly reduce both of these problems: paper recycling. Paper is mainly made from cellulose (纤维素), which makes up the cell walls of trees and many other plants. Because of its structure, cellulose can be used repeatedly in papermaking. So far, trees are the only source of cellulose that can fill the massive demand for paper products. Therefore, recycling paper is simply one of the best ways to save trees.
Thanks to advances in processing, recycled paper isn’t the dull-colored stuff many of us are familiar with any more. It now can offer the same print performance as non-recycled paper.
Effective recycling requires a consistent effort. The way to begin is with education and understanding. Once enough people realize the need for recycling, more effective recycling systems can be carried out. The massive loss of trees affects everybody on earth. Everyone should do their part to recycle paper and encourage government and industries to do the same.
1. What does the author want to express in paragraph 1?| A．Consequences resulting from forest loss. |
| B．The significance of paper in daily life. |
| C．The disadvantages of current paper production. |
| D．The severe situation caused by papermaking. |
| A．It releases smelly gases. | B．It results in global climate change. |
| C．It pollutes the nearby land. | D．It may lead to fire accidents. |
| A．It produces cellulose to make more paper. | B．The structure of cellulose makes it possible. |
| C．The color of recycled paper is different. | D．It produces cellulose without using trees. |
| A．To introduce paper recycling technology. | B．To stress the threat of global warming. |
| C．To appeal to people to recycle paper. | D．To describe the considerable need for paper. |
