1 . Shop Sustainably
If you have to name one thing that contributes most to your ecological footprints, you may say the energy you use at home, or your car’s emissions.
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●Avoid unnecessary packing. Buy loose fruit and vegetables instead of pre-packaged produce, and avoid products that contain multiple single packages or double packaging, like grain in a box and a bag. Consider switching from tea bags and coffee pods to tea leaves and ground coffee.
●Go organic when you can. In addition to the benefit organic farming has to insect biodiversity, it’s also considered more sustainable and better for the environment.
●Buy seasonal and native products.
| A．Take reusable grocery bags. |
| B．Select single-use plastic bags. |
| C．It supports local farmers and food producers. |
| D．You can also refill your own containers with loose-packed food. |
| E．When buying organic products, look for those officially certified. |
| F．But it’s what we eat that accounts for up to 60% of our personal demand. |
| G．You’ll find it convenient whenever you buy tea or coffee in the supermarket. |
2 . A Purdue University invention could save millions of taxpayer dollars and significantly reduce traffic delays. The new invention, a sensor that allows concrete to “talk”, decreases construction time and how often concrete pavement (路面) needs repairs while also improving the road’s sustainability and cutting its carbon footprint. Fixed directly into a concrete pour the sensor sends engineers more precise and consistent data about the concrete’s strength and need for repairs than is possible with currently used tools and methods.
“Traffic jams caused by repairs have wasted 4 billion hours and 3 billion gallons of gas, on a yearly basis. This is mainly due to insufficient knowledge and understanding of concrete’s strength levels,” said Luna Lu, who has been leading development of the sensor since 2017. “For instance, we don’t know when concrete will reach the right strength needed to accommodate traffic loads just after construction. The concrete may be put into use too early,leading to frequent repairing,” she added.
With the technology Lu and her team invented, engineers can directly monitor the fresh concrete and accurately measure many of its properties at once. The sensor notifies engineers via a smartphone app exactly when the pavement is strong enough to handle heavy traffic. The stronger the pavement is before being used by vehicles, the less often it will need to be repaired. By decreasing road repairs and construction timelines, this technology could reduce carbon dioxide that vehicles would have given off while waiting in traffic to get around a construction site.
Methods that the industry has used for more than a century call for testing large samples of concrete at a lab or onsite facility. Even though these tests are well understood by the industry, differences between lab and outdoor conditions can lead to inaccurate estimates of the concrete’s strength due to the different concrete compositions and temperatures of the surrounding area.
1. What can be learned about the new invention?| A．It decreases accidents. |
| B．It is costly to produce. |
| C．It reduces road repairs. |
| D．It is difficult to operate. |
| A．Waste caused by road repairs. |
| B．Characteristics of the concrete. |
| C．Situations of road constructions. |
| D．Necessity of inventing the sensor. |
| A．Signals. | B．Awakes. | C．Monitor. | D．Examines. |
| A．Samples must be tested on the spot. |
| B．The results turn out to be unreliable. |
| C．Fewer properties have been measured. |
| D．Concrete is tested in certain temperature. |
3 . British sculptor Jason Taylor has made it his mission to use his talent to conserve our ecosystems by creating underwater museums. Over the years, the environmentalist has put over 850 massive artworks underwater worldwide. On February 1, 2021, Taylor launched his latest work---The Underwater Museum of Cannes.
“The main goal was to bring attention to the fact that our oceans need our help,” Taylor told Dezeen. “Ocean ecologies have been destroyed by human activity in the Mediterranean over the past few decades, and it is not obvious what is taking place when observing the sea from afar.”
The Underwater Museum of Cannes contains 6 sculptures featuring local residents of various ages. They range from Maurice, an 80-year-old fisherman, to Anouk, a 9-year-old student. Towering over 6-feet-tall and weighing 10 tons, the faces are sectioned into two parts, with the outer part like a mask. The mask indicates that the world’s oceans appear powerful and unbeatable from the surface but house an ecosystem that is extremely fragile to careless human activities.
Though the waters surrounding the sculptures now appear a pristine blue, the seabed was filled with old boat engines, pipes, and other human-made trash when the project began about four years ago. Besides removing the trash, Taylor also restored the area’s seagrass. Just one square meter of the seagrass can generate up to 10 liters of oxygen daily. The seagrass also helps prevent coastal erosion and provides habitats for many ocean creatures.
“The idea of creating an underwater museum was to draw more people underwater and develop a sense of care and protection,” Taylor told Dezeen. “If we threw unwanted waste near a forest, there would be a public outcry. But this is happening every day in our surrounding waters and it largely goes unnoticed.”
1. What are the underwater museums intended to do?| A．To make huge profits. | B．To raise awareness of protecting the ocean. |
| C．To show Jason Taylor’s talent. | D．To draw attention to endangered sea animals. |
| A．To popularize the features of the locals. |
| B．To remind people to protect themselves. |
| C．To reflect people’s protection of the ocean. |
| D．To stress the sensitiveness of the ecosystem. |
| A．How the project was started. | B．How the seagrass was restored. |
| C．What recovery effort the project made. | D．Why the surroundings were improved. |
| A．The situation of the ocean is easily ignored. |
| B．The destruction caused to the ocean is noticeable. |
| C．Forests play a more important role in ecosystems. |
| D．People have zero tolerance to damage done to nature. |
4 . In the rich countries of the West, the electric vehicle revolution is well underway. Climate-conscious consumers drive Teslas or Polestars for reasons of morality and fashion. Poorer countries are also experiencing a wave of electrified trend. In Bangladesh, electric three-wheeler taxis, known as tuk-tuks, are rapidly replacing gas-powered ones on the streets. Such electric vehicles are climate friendly, cost effective, and help reduce air pollution.
Yet a glance under the hood (引擎盖) of these vehicles reveals a poisonous secret: each tuk-tuk runs on five massive lead-acid batteries, containing almost 300 pounds of lead in total. Every year and a half or so, when those batteries need to be replaced and recycled, about 60 pounds of lead leak into the environment. Battery recycling, often at small-scale unregulated factories, is a highly profitable but deadly business.
Lead is dangerous, and any exposure to it is harmful to human health. Lead that has entered the environment hurts people on an extraordinary scale. The numerous ways lead enters air, water, soil, and homes across the developing world — and the enormous damage it does to human health, wealth, and welfare — causes one of the biggest environmental crises in the world yet receives little attention.
The World Bank estimates that lead kills 5. 5 million people per year, which would make it a bigger global killer than AIDS, malaria, diabetes, and road traffic deaths combined. On top of the shocking deaths, the social burden of lead poisoning is extraordinary, as is its contribution to global inequality — our research on the cognitive effects of lead poisoning suggests that it may explain about one-fifth of the educational achievement gap between rich and poor countries.
But unlike many challenges faced by developing countries, lead poisoning is a problem that is fixable with some attention and a relatively modest financial investment. Better monitoring, research, and rules can help protect children all over the world from the dreadful effects of lead poisoning and reduce the massive global costs it brings.
1. How does the author describe the lead problem in paragraph 2?| A．By making a comparison. | B．By analyzing hidden causes. |
| C．By listing convincing numbers. | D．By explaining its working principle. |
| A．Lead enters rich countries in various ways. |
| B．Lead poisoning may make poor societies poorer. |
| C．Exposure to lead doesn’t necessarily harm someone. |
| D．Lead leaking has caused great panic in both countries. |
| A．Fixing these used batteries. | B．Putting certain effort and money. |
| C．Prohibiting the illegal use of lead. | D．Reducing the cost of recycling lead. |
| A．The Impacts of Lead Poisoning on Human Health |
| B．The Outcomes of Using Electric Vehicles |
| C．The Ways to Solve Lead Problem |
| D．The Global Lead Poisoning Crisis |
5 . A future where insects make up a large part of the world’s diet is on the horizon. Despite the unpleasant nature of such cuisine, insects have been considered a delicacy in some parts of world for centuries. Their being low-fat and high-protein makes them a perfect choice for reducing hunger.
Animal protein from livestock (家畜), such as cows, chicken and pigs, takes up 80 percent of the entire world’s farmland, despite only making up less than one-fifth of calories consumed globally.
Insects such as grasshoppers, meal worms and crickets are packed full of protein with much higher vitamin levels than pork or beef.
It seems that insects are an ideal solution for many issues the world today is faced with.
Times are changing. The European Union last year declared that meal worms were safe for human consumption. Cricket protein powder is also increasing greatly in popularity, with Canada rapidly becoming the largest market for the product.
| A．They also have a host of environmental benefits. |
| B．Insects reproduce quickly and have high growth rates. |
| C．Unlike agriculture, insects produce far fewer greenhouse gases. |
| D．They require little space, water and technology to raise compared to livestock. |
| E．However, making them a delicious cuisine can be a challenge in several cultures. |
| F．By freeing up livestock space, huge expanses of land could be returned to nature. |
| G．A future where insects will become invaluable to space exploration is also upcoming. |
6 . The UN this week launched a report urging companies to stop issuing false net-zero targets that amount to greenwashing.
Greenwashing is a term used to describe situations where companies mislead consumers by claiming to be eco-friendly or sustainable as a marketing plan rather than as a core principle of their business model. Often, these industries spend more money making themselves appear sustainable than they do taking actual sustainable measures into their company.
Cities, financial institutions, and scores of companies have announced plans to reduce their emissions to zero, which, in principle, should help the fight against climate change.
“The problem is that the criteria for these net-zero commitments have varying levels of precision and loopholes (漏洞),” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during the launch of the report.
Many net-zero plans contain far-away or unclear targets and often call for the use of unproved technologies like carbon capture and tree planting, which effectively allow companies to continue polluting the atmosphere. Studies show that most of these net-zero plans will do little to stop temperatures from rising. For example, many oil majors have announced plans to reduce emissions from their operations to zero by 2050 that do not take into account the carbon emitted by the fossil fuels they sell, which would allow them to increase production. Far from decreasing, fossil fuel production is going strong.
To close these net-zero loopholes, the UN this week released a report that includes 10 recommendations to ensure that companies, cities, regions, and other non-state actors issue credible and accountable net zero commitments. “Their plans cannot rely on cheap carbon credits instead of immediately cutting their own emissions,” Guterres said.
Financial institutions need to cut down emissions from all their investments and businesses need to bring down the carbon footprint of their supply chain, the report said. The report’s lead author, Catherine McKenna, urged companies to release new net-zero targets within a year. The updated targets must contain concrete actionable details.
1. What does “greenwashing” refer to?| A．A green technology. | B．A misleading statement. |
| C．A business model. | D．A spending target. |
| A．To prove oil majors are really responsible. |
| B．To set some good examples for other companies. |
| C．To show some net- zero commitments make no sense. |
| D．To indicate the benefit of net zero plans to climate change. |
| A．Dissatisfied. | B．Guilty. | C．Shocked. | D．Confused. |
| A．Plant more trees. | B．Share more supply chains. |
| C．Depend on cheap carbon credits. | D．Make concrete actionable targets. |
7 . Conservation scientist Kim Williams-Guillen was trying her best to come up with a way to save endangered sea turtles (海龟) from egg thieves when she had an “aha” moment: If she placed a fake (假的) egg containing a GPS tracker in the reptiles’ nests, she might be able to track the thieves.
Williams-Guillen found a flexible plastic material to mimic (仿造) the shell of real eggs. She and colleagues then used a 3D printer to produce the fakes of the same size, weight, and texture and put the smallest GPS tracking devices inside each. The researchers then went to four Costa Rican beaches, where green sea turtle come ashore to make their nests. As mothers laid their eggs under cover of night, the researchers slipped a fake egg into each nest. Once the fakes are covered in sand and mix with the real eggs, it’s very difficult to tell the difference between the two.
Of the 101 fake eggs, 25 were taken by thieves. The farthest moving egg traveled 137 kilometers inland. The fake egg sent its final signal the next day from a residential property, suggesting that the research team had tracked the eggs through “all of the players in the entire chain.”
By understanding that chain, Williams-Guillen says researchers can identify trading hot spots. She emphasizes that the tracker is not a way to catch local thieves, many of them living in poverty, but a tool to better understand their routes, which could help them and eventually law enforcement (执法部门) identify larger players in the chain.
In the meantime, Williams-Guillen and her colleagues are working to get their fake eggs to other sea turtle conservation organizations. Ultimately, though, scientists and nonprofits are going to engage communities with local outreach and education programs to save sea turtles. She says, “The real meat and potatoes of conservation isn’t going to come from deploying (布署) eggs.”
1. What can be learnt from paragraph 2?| A．Fake eggs are made and employed. | B．Sea turtles have become endangered. |
| C．Sea turtles lay eggs during the daytime. | D．The idea of fake eggs came into being. |
| A．To confirm whether the fake eggs really work. |
| B．To provide data for doing research on turtle eggs. |
| C．To arrest the locals stealing the turtle eggs from the beach. |
| D．To identify the trading routes and get the big players punished. |
| A．Deploying eggs needs advocating further. |
| B．Turtle conservation mainly relies on joint efforts. |
| C．She feels disappointed with the local communities. |
| D．Deploying eggs makes no difference in preserving turtles. |
| A．Saving endangered sea turtles is urgent |
| B．Endangered turtles can be traced with GPS |
| C．GPS eggs helps to save endangered sea turtles |
| D．A conservation scientist is devoted to protecting sea turtles |
8 . The carbon footprint shows how much carbon dioxide a person emits(排放)in everyday life. It measures the amount offossil(化石)fuels and electricity someone uses up as well as the carbon footprint of the products they buy. When we use our cars or heat our homes with carbon dioxide，various other gases are set free.
You can measure your carbon footprint by using a calculator that you can find on various websites.
| A．Many people travel between cities and suburbs every day. |
| B．The carbon footprint is usually measured in tons of CO2 per year. |
| C．These emissions lead to a thicker atmosphere and global warming. |
| D．It is also vital to persuade others to take the same steps that you do. |
| E．There are many actions you can take to reduce your carbon footprint. |
| F．The websites also provide carbon storage tools and methods for individuals. |
| G．Buying local food is another way of restricting emission into the atmosphere. |
9 . When Malaika Vaz was a kid, living in Goa, India, she was constantly surrounded by nature. Among her childhood experiences, she recalls journeys to the Arctic and Antarctic, climbing mountains, diving, and windsurfing.
At some point in her late teens, Vaz realized adventure didn’t really mean anything if there wasn’t an intention to protect the natural spaces we were exploring in. Motivated by her passion for filmmaking, she began to seek a way that would both satisfy her appetite for adventure and allow her to advocate the protection of the species and ecosystems she interacted with.
Today Vaz wears many hats in the filmmaking world, as a documentary director, producer, and presenter. After falling in love with manta rays (蝠鲼), she discovered they were being hunted illegally and started to dress herself as a seafood trader to get as close as possible to the issue. She traced sellers to figure out why the threatened species were being killed. She shared the shocking details in Peng Yu Sai, her Green Oscar-nominated film on the matter.
The subjects that grab her attention, Vaz admits, run the gamut. When she was asked to define her focus, she replied that she preferred variety. She always argues that the issues she looks into are more interrelated than they may initially appear. “I think that it’s exciting to dive into the different aspects of environmental stories,” she says.
Her work doesn’t stop at recording important stories; she also ensures the message is heard. From Vaz’s viewpoint, real improvement in planetary protection lies in the hands of each of us rather than just those of several environmentalists. “If you’re an engineer and you care about the natural world, you can change the kind of construction materials you use. If you’re a teacher loving nature, you can bring that into the learning for your class.” she says.
As a filmmaker, Vaz believes it’s important to figure out ways that attract the audience who can push for the protection of the natural world.
1. What did Malaika Vaz decide to do in her late teens?| A．Motivate children to get close to nature. |
| B．Make a film about her childhood experiences. |
| C．Develop a passion for an adventurous lifestyle. |
| D．Combine nature exploration with nature conservation. |
| A．The role of manta rays in the local economy. | B．Vaz’s personal life as a seafood trader. |
| C．The threatened species in India. | D．The illegal trade in manta rays. |
| A．Are quite popular. | B．Cover a wide range. |
| C．Make little progress. | D．Are hard to deal with. |
| A．Human beings are closely linked to nature. |
| B．Stories are effective in changing people’s behavior. |
| C．Everyone can make a difference to the environment. |
| D．Environmentalists play a big part in solving environmental issues. |
One morning on my way to school, noticed an elderly woman dressed in a yellow vest (马 甲)carrying a garbage bag and one of those rubbish claws (爪形器具)."What's that lady doing?" I asked mum. "Vest Lady. She just picks up rubbish around here for fun," mum said. "Why would someone think picking up rubbish looking like a construction worker is fun?" I puzzled.
For several years I'd witness this mysterious Vest Lady—rain or shine — on my way to school. I had thought she was crazy for picking up rubbish. Eventually I smiled and waved at her each time I saw her. Later, I moved to high school. The time I saw rubbish here and there I felt really annoyed. Then I'd think, "Why isn't anyone picking up this rubbish? People are so inconsiderate I" However, shortly after, I realized picking up the rubbish was not someone ease's problem.
Now I couldn't walk past litter without feeling guilty. I volunteered to clean up rubbish around our school. Strange as it might sound, picking up litter was kind of a thrill for me! In fact, I was so determined that for my 17th birthday I bought myself a rubbish claw, reusable gloves and a reflective safety yellow vest with my own name on it.
During my first attempt in my stylish equipment, met with unfriendly looks from others as if I were a criminal doing community service. One day,I had an epiphany(顿悟):"I'm acting just like Vest Lady!"
But there was too much rubbish around, cigarette ends littered about, cans rolling on the street,pieces of paper hidden in the grass and plastic. alone was too weak J How would I get more volunteers involved in rubbish removal? A smart idea flashed into my mind.
注意:
1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Soon I created my website go picking up com.
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More and more people on vests with their own names.
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