1 . If you’re looking for something fun to do, pack a picnic dinner and take your family or friends to a beautiful place to eat. However, there’s a wrong trend to view picnics as an excuse to transport food in single-use plastic containers. Sure, it means the cleanup is easy at the moment, but it just puts it off to a later point, when it takes the form of volunteer cleanups and landfill management.
●Use food containers smartly
Using reusable containers is the easiest way to reduce waste.
●Choose real cutlery (餐具)
Using washable dishes and cutlery for a picnic does not require much more work than single-use ones.
You’d have to carry the waste out anyway in a trash bag, so why not pack your dirty plates and cutlery into a bag and put them in the dishwasher at home?
●Think about the drinks
Forget the single-use, single-serve drink bottles.
●Put cloth bags to good use
Cloth bags are amazing. I use them for so much more than just buying food at the store. They’re perfect for packing sandwiches, dried or whole fruit, and other snack foods. You can use them to pack glasses or plates to prevent breaking. They can also work as a napkin, tea towel, or trash bag if needed.
| A．Be sure to add a few to your picnic basket. |
| B．There are some healthy dishes you can make or buy. |
| C．To avoid this, a plastic-free picnic can be a brilliant idea. |
| D．If you’re worried about breaking, take some light camping plates. |
| E．Instead, just bring along a cloth tablecloth to spread on the ground. |
| F．These create a huge amount of waste, which can be easily avoided. |
| G．In addition, keep in mind that you don’t have to pre-pack everything. |
2 . Working at an investment bank in New York City in the mid-2010s. Anna Sacks was living the life—just not the life she wanted. Sure, she was happy. But she wanted to do something that felt important and was fulfilling on a deeper level.
Sacks packed up her life and moved to Connecticut for three months to participate in Adamah, a Jewish farming program that focuses on sustainable living and growing sustainable food. The Adamah program opened Sacks’s eyes to the damage consumer culture is doing on a local, national, and global level, and the need to find solutions. From then on, she began what she calls “trash (垃圾) walking.”
While walking around her neighborhood, Sacks, 31, picked through rubbish to look for reusable items. Soon, her trash walks expanded to include company rubbish along with residential trash. Surprisingly, she discovered a wide range of really great stuff—like clothing, dinnerware, and food—all of which she documents on Instagram and TikTok.
Under the name The Trash Walker, Sacks quickly gained popularity for her educational, funny, and surprising videos that highlight the problems with consumerism and share information about how to live a more sustainable life. “The root issue is overproduction, which leads to overconsumption, which leads to a large amount of waste,” she says. Sacks’s videos have gone viral many times, causing shockwaves through the industries she calls out.
Trash walking has given Sacks a nearly endless supply and she shares much of her “treasure” with others. She tries giving them informally to family, friends, or individuals she knows may need a specific item. Then she takes the remaining items to free stores so other New Yorkers can benefit from her treasure-hunting.
Sacks’s main focus is simply getting people to pay attention to how many unnecessary things they buy and then throw away. “Once you become aware of the way you consume, you can see ways you improve,” she says.
1. What inspired Sacks to begin her “trash walking”?| A．Her desire to live a richer life. | B．The great need for household stuff. |
| C．Her involvement in a project. | D．The wish to be an Internet star. |
| A．Funny stories. | B．Views on consumption. |
| C．Educational courses. | D．Solutions to problems. |
| A．She donates all to the charity. | B．She keeps most for her family. |
| C．She gives away much to others. | D．She sells some to individuals. |
| A．Trash Walker: Find Treasure in Trash. |
| B．Trash Walking: A Tough Journey. |
| C．Trash Walker: Live in the Moment. |
| D．Trash Walking: A New Career. |
3 . How did Cape Town, South Africa, get into a Day Zero situation—when the city’s taps would go dry because its reservoirs (水库)would become dangerously low on water? The city gets its water from six reservoirs in Western Cape province, which usually
Cape Town is not
In the U.S., the situation is somewhat better, but many urban centers still
| A．take over | B．fill up | C．make off | D．set out |
| A．decreased | B．rose | C．remained | D．drowned |
| A．likelihood | B．proportion | C．demand | D．efficiency |
| A．architecture | B．agriculture | C．economy | D．conservation |
| A．policy | B．growth | C．crisis | D．change |
| A．enough | B．possible | C．difficult | D．alone |
| A．making up for | B．resulting from | C．taking advantage of | D．looking into |
| A．In a word | B．By comparison | C．What’s worse | D．For example |
| A．avoid | B．solve | C．discuss | D．face |
| A．passive | B．purposeful | C．adaptable | D．reliable |
| A．Similarly | B．Fortunately | C．Initially | D．Alternatively |
| A．questionable | B．memorable | C．effective | D．confusing |
| A．daily | B．legal | C．maximum | D．normal |
| A．neglect | B．lack | C．provide | D．find |
| A．drink | B．pour | C．place | D．record |
At the Shishou Milu National Nature Reserve in Hubei Province, about 2,000 creatures wander freely. Their numbers include 460 deer born this year, showing that the species,
Often
In the
5 . Many people think of sharks as dangerous monsters. But human beings cause a far greater danger to them than they do to us. Although shark attacks do occur, they are quite rare. According to one estimate, however, humans kill 100 million sharks every year.
Why should we save the sharks?
Sharks take up the top position on the food chain in the ocean. As sharks die off, the population of the animals that sharks consume will increase. This, in turn, means that the number of the creatures those animals eat will drop.
Don’t use shark products
First, vitamin energy drinks and leather goods can be made from shark parts.
| A．It is time for children to learn about sharks. |
| B．Shark oil is also used in many popular beauty products. |
| C．Then the shark dies slowly, sometimes over several days. |
| D．Actually, the killing of sharks will affect the whole planet. |
| E．People in some countries are especially keen on shark products. |
| F．Among them are some sea fish that humans consume every day. |
| G．This number is a warning that many kinds of sharks may die out. |
6 . Not only does the use of plastic water bottles hurt your wallet, it also increases pollution and wastes energy and water. Only 23% of all plastic in America ends up in a recycling bin, meaning over $ 1 billion worth of plastic is treated as rubbish a year. Recently, Skipping Rocks Lab has invented a kind of water bottle called Ooho.
It is a convenient, clear water bottle that can either be drunken or eaten. To drink it, you can either peel off the membrane (薄膜) or tear a hole in the membrane with your teeth to pour the water into your mouth. To eat it, you simply put the whole bottle in your mouth. One problem the scientists have run into is how to ship large amounts of Ooho bubbles(水泡) without arriving with a very wet truck. However, they have attempted to package units of individual bubbles together inside a larger and thicker membrane. It is targeting large outdoor events, such as marathons, music festivals, and sporting events, where tons of plastic bottles are used, and frequently left behind as litter. And too much plastic is sure to do harm to the environment, which could account for their purpose of such a new invention.
The team has been working for the past two years to develop the technology and materials needed to produce Ooho; they have recently applied a patent for their new advancements. The price for an individual bubble or a unit of bubbles has not been set yet, but they cost about two cents to create a unit, which is cheaper than plastic bottles. It has appeared at events in London, San Francisco, Boston, at conferences, festivals, and so on.
Ooho is catching many people’s attention and has raised over $ 1 million and gained 1,000 investors in only three days. It is mostly being sold at events at the moment to keep the consumer’s interest while the production machine is getting up and running. It is quickly making a rise,so keep an eye out this year for these bottles of the future.
1. How is most plastic dealt with in America?| A．It’s sold. | B．It’s recycled. |
| C．It’s buried. | D．It’s wasted. |
| A．To make a profit for a company. | B．To protect the environtnent. |
| C．To make people eat as they drink. | D．To reduce the cost of plastic bottle. |
| A．It is easy and safe to ship it in large amounts. |
| B．It has become popular since it began to be sold. |
| C．It might be sold at a lower price than plastic bottles. |
| D．It cost the team a lot of money to develop the technology. |
| A．Ooho is to be a success in the future. |
| B．Ooho is being supported by smart people. |
| C．Ooho is taking the place of plastic bottles now. |
| D．Ooho is being produced to attract more investors. |
7 . Working at a bank in New York City in the mid-2010s, Anna Sacks was living the life-just not the life she wanted. Sure, she was happy. But she wanted to do something that felt important.
Some people seeking meaning might read a self-help book or perhaps volunteer a few hours a week. Sacks packed up her life and moved to Connecticut to participate in Adamah, a farming program that focuses on sustainable living and growing sustainable food. When she returned to New York, her life was with a new purpose and a variety of new skills to make her dreams a reality.
“One of the things that really stuck with me from Adamah was how little waste they produced and how they handled the waste they did have, primarily through composting (堆肥),” she says. “And I just thought, ‘Why aren’t we doing that here?’”“The Adamah program opened Sacks’ eyes to the damage consumer culture is doing on a local, national, and global level, and the need to find solutions. So in 2017, she began what she calls “trash walking”.
During tours around her community, Sacks picks through garbage to look for reusable items. Soon, her “trash walking” expanded to include corporate trash along with residential trash. Surprisingly, she discovered a wide range of really great stuff-like clothing, decorations, and food-all of which she documents on TikTok.
Under the name The Trash Walker, Sacks quickly gained popularity for her videos that highlight the problems with consumerism. “The root issue is overproduction, which leads to overconsumption, which leads to a large amount of waste,” she says.
The fact is, companies often choose to trash items rather than give them away to people who might need them. A big reason for this waste is the way our current tax laws are structured, Sacks says. Sellers who destroy goods can claim the cost as a loss on their taxes and be refunded. If they give away goods, they can claim only a small amount as a charitable reduction on their taxes.
Sacks’ main focus is simply getting people to pay attention to how many unnecessary things they buy and then throw away. “Once you become aware of the way you consume, you can see ways you improve,” she says.
1. Anna Sacks packed up her life and left New York to________.| A．lead a healthy lifestyle |
| B．observe how to grow food |
| C．pursue a meaningful life |
| D．volunteer to work in a bank |
| A．The importance of trash walking. |
| B．The sustainable food people produced. |
| C．The hard truth about consumer culture. |
| D．The way people there dealt with the waste. |
| A．The tax reduction. |
| B．The quality of goods. |
| C．The tax refund. |
| D．The overproduction. |
| A．Consumer culture accounts for wasting. |
| B．Corporate trash outweighs residential trash. |
| C．Trash walking is the key to becoming wealthy. |
| D．Turning to farming leads to sustainable living. |
1. 活动时间，地点;
2. 活动内容；
3. 希望获准。
注意：1.写作词数应为80左右； 2.请按如下格式作答。
参考词汇: 国际部环保社 the International Department's Environment Protection Club 减塑Less Plastics
Dear Mr. Smith，
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
9 . For most of human history, people raised crops and livestock to feed their households rather than to sell them for profit. This began to shift after the Industrial Revolution, which saw the rise of plantation farming.
Industrial farming not only increased the crop-growing areas, but changed the techniques used by farmers. Instead of switching the crops that were grown on a field each year, entire plantations would be devoted to a single crop. This approach and intensive modes of farming led to destruction of local biodiversity and land worsening — within years, fields would cease to produce crops.
Plantations of the 18th and 19th centuries were a “get rich quick plan” rather than a long-term investment. Once a field became unusable, plantation owners would simply move on to new land. Up to the end of the 19th century, wide areas of our planet were still not claimed by global modernity. But today, while we are quickly running out of vegetative (覆盖植被的) land, this mindset continues. “Farmers still hold the view that land is cheap and limitless,” said Crystal Davis from the World Resources Institute. “Most of them just cut down more trees, when new land is needed.”
“To meet our ecological goals, we need to stop turning natural ecosystems to farmland,” Davis said. “We can achieve this in part by bringing back the land’s ecological wholeness and productivity.”
Davis points to the 20×20 initiative (倡议), which has seen 18 South American and Caribbean countries commit to recovering 50m hectares of land by 2030. It includes a number of projects aimed at introducing agroforestry (混农林业) practices to cocoa and coffee farms in Colombia and Nicaragua. There farmers are encouraged to grow crops while introducing more trees to their land.
1. What can we learn about industrial farming?| A．It existed for most of human history. |
| B．It changed farming methods. |
| C．It increased crop production steadily. |
| D．It reduced crop-planting areas. |
| A．Abuse the land for quick profit. |
| B．Desert wide areas of plantations. |
| C．Adopt modern technology to farm. |
| D．Plant more trees to satisfy global need. |
| A．It advocates eco-friendly farming. |
| B．It involves countries around the world. |
| C．It encourages farmers to develop more land. |
| D．It focuses on increasing cocoa and coffee output. |
| A．How Can We Take up Farming? | B．How Can We Feed the World? |
| C．Meeting Our Ecological Goals | D．Shifting to Regenerative Agriculture |
内容包括：
1. 露营造成的问题；
2. 爱护环境的倡议。
注意：
1. 词数80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Leave-No-Trace Camping
Dear all,____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Li Hua
February 2, 2024
