1 . A company in San Francisco, California, has found a way to turn used plastic bottles into women's shoes.
Every day, millions of Americans drink water and other liquids from plastic bottles. More than 60 million of them are thrown away each day. Many of the plastic bottles end up in landfills or are burned with other waste products.
A San Francisco start-up company called Rothy's, however, turns this plastic waste into environmentally friendly shoes. Roth Martin is the company's co-founder. He explains how they turn plastic into soft material for women's feet. They take the plastic, clean it, and break it down into small pieces. Then they press them through a device that makes soft fibers. Those fibers are then combined together. This is done by a 3D machine. It is designed to reduce waste while making the shoes. The knitted stuff and the inner part of the shoe are then attached to the shoe's outer part, called the sole. This outer sole is also made from environmentally friendly material: responsibly sourced no-carbon rubber.
Rothy's shoes are sold online. They are flat shoes, with either a rounded or pointed toe. They come in different colors and designs. They cost either $ 125 or $ 145 per pair, depending on the design. After American actress Gwyneth Paltrow discovered them last year, the demand for the shoes grew. Martin says there is no shortage of material to fill that demand. “We're not going to run out of water bottles any time soon. So we have a limitless supply of material, and I think that is a good sign for our future.” When the environmentally friendly shoes wear out, customers can return them at no cost to a company that uses the recycled material to make other products.
For now, the shoes are only available to be shipped in the United States. However, the company says it will add international shipping in the near future.
1. How are used plastic bottles usually dealt with?A.They are used to make shoes. | B.They are buried or burned. |
C.They are changed into soft materials. | D.They are returned to factories for reuse. |
A.Combined. | B.Fixed. |
C.Spotted. | D.Repaired. |
A.The design and color. | B.The reasonable price. |
C.The company's advertisement. | D.The star power of Gwyneth Paltrow. |
A.To advertise a new kind of shoes. |
B.To introduce a new way of recycling plastic waste. |
C.To describe the process of making shoes. |
D.To stress the importance of environmental protection. |
2 . The bristlecone pine is the longest-living thing on the earth. These trees, with their strangely-shaped, wind-beaten limbs(枝干), can live up to 5,000 years. But experts worry that a warming climate in some areas may threaten its future.
Researchers say warmer weather is permitting a similar kind of tree, the limber pine, to take over good growing places from the ancient bristlecone. They say the tree is being crowded out of mountainous areas where it grows.
“The bristlecone pine is the oldest individually growing organism,” researchers say. They grow in high mountain forests in eastern California, Nevada and Utah. In those mountains, the trees face high winds and extreme temperatures, which leave them with twisted limbs and shapes. “Even in such tough conditions,” Brian Smithers, a researcher at the University of California, said, “the limber pine is taking all the good spots.”
The limber pine is the bristlecone’s distant relative and competitor. It can also live a long time——up to 2,000 years. And it is usually found at lower altitudes, where temperatures are warmer. However, according to a three-year study which centered on trees that have started growing in the last 50 years in California’s White Mountains, most of the trees growing at higher altitudes were limber pines.
Scientists compared the competing species to two o1d men in a very slow race up a mountainside. This race between such slow-growing trees takes thousands of years. They say climate change is causing the competition.
Smithers said the bristlecone pines are not in danger of disappearing. But he assumes they could be crowded out of some places where they have grown for thousands of years.
The researchers say the findings show how climate change can affect the two kinds of trees. The information, they say, can help scientists understand more complex forests.
1. What’s the function of Paragraph 1?A.To introduce a topic. | B.To summarize the whole passage. |
C.To describe the appearance of a tree. | D.To praise the hard work of the experts. |
A.There will be older trees sent out of those mountains. |
B.There will be more places covered with bristlecone pines. |
C.There will be better limber pines replacing the ancient ones. |
D.There will be fewer bristlecone pines growing in those areas. |
A.the high winds | B.the difficult conditions |
C.the changing climate | D.the extreme temperatures |
A.Positive. | B.Concerned. |
C.Enthusiastic. | D.Indifferent. |
3 . A company in San Francisco, California, has found a way to turn used plastic bottles into women’s shoes.
Every day, millions of Americans drink water and other liquids from plastic bottles. More than 60 million of them are thrown away each day. Many of the plastic bottles end up in landfills or are burned with other waste products.
A San Francisco start-up company called Rothy’s, however, turns this plastic waste into environmentally friendly shoes. Roth Martin is the company’s co-founder. He explains how they turn plastic into soft material for women’s feet. They take the plastic, clean it, and break it down into small pieces. Then they press them through a device that makes soft fibers. Those fibers are then combined together. This is done by a 3D machine. It is designed to reduce waste while making the shoes. The knitted stuff and the inner part of the shoe are then attached to the shoe’s outer part, called the sole (鞋底). This outer sole is also made from environmentally friendly material: responsibly sourced no-carbon rubber.
Rothy’s shoes are sold online. They are flat shoes, with either a rounded or pointed toe. They come in different colors and designs. They cost either $ 125 or $ 145 per pair, depending on the design. After American actress Gwyneth Paltrow discovered them last year, the demand for the shoes grew. Martin says there is no shortage of material to fill that demand. “We’re not going to run out of water bottles any time soon. So we have a limitless supply of material, and I think that is a good sign for our future.” When the environmentally friendly shoes wear out, customers can return them at no cost to a company that uses the recycled materials to make other products.
For now, the shoes are only available to be shipped in the United States. However, the company says it will add international shipping in the near future.
1. How are used plastic bottles usually dealt with?A.They are buried or burned. |
B.They are used to make shoes. |
C.They are changed into soft materials. |
D.They are returned to factories for reuse. |
A.Attached. | B.Fixed. |
C.Combined. | D.Repaired. |
A.The design and color. | B.The reasonable price. |
C.The company’s advertisement. | D.The star power of Gwyneth Paltrow. |
A.To advertise a new kind of shoes. |
B.To describe the process of making shoes. |
C.To introduce a new way of recycling plastic waste. |
D.To stress the importance of environmental protection. |
4 . In the fight to conserve tropical rainforests, here’s a tool you don’t often hear about:orange peels. Specifically, 12,000 tons of them, dumped (倾倒) on the land. “You don’t usually associate waste treatment with biodiversity benefits, something that’s good for the environment.
Tim Treuer is an ecologist at Princeton University. and he’s talking about a unique conservation story. It started in the early 1990s, when an orange juice producer cal led Del Oro set up a company near the Guanacaste Conservation Area in Costa Rica, a region that contains several national parks and a widlife protection zone.
Del Oro needed somewhere to dump the orange peels, and the company also owned forested land next to the parkland that it had no intention of growing crops on. So a deal was struck: if Del Oro donated its forested land, it could dump orange peel waste on degraded(退化的) land within the conservation area. Then a thousand dump trucks’ worth of orange peels were lying on the land in 1998. “And within about six months the orange peels had been turned from orange peels into this thick black rich soil.”
“I couldn’t even find the site the fist time I saw it.” He couldn’t find it because, over 16 years, the orange peel waste had sent the land on a journey to become a vine-choked jungle, with three times the diversity of tree species of the neighboring control plot, richer soil and a much thicker covering. In other words, the experiment was a success. The results appear in the journal Restoration Ecology.
Treuer says perhaps this lesson could be applied elsewhere. “It’s a shame that we live in a world with nutrient-limited degraded ecosystems and also nutrient-rich waste streams. We’d like to see those things come together a little bit. That’s not license for any agricultural company to just start dumping their waste products on protected areas, but it does mean that land managers, people involved with industrial-scale agricultural operations should start thinking about ways to do thoughtful experimentation to see if in their particular system they can have similar win-win-win results.”
1. What does the underlined word “It” in Paragraph 2 refer to?A.Waste treatment. |
B.A conservation story. |
C.An orange juice company. |
D.The biodiversity benefit. |
A.They are particularly hard to break down. |
B.They can change the color of the land soil. |
C.They are beneficial to biological diversity. |
D.They can gradually destroy the surface soil. |
A.Waste can be used for environmental protection. |
B.No waste can be thrown randomly on the protected areas. |
C.Large-scale agricultural operations start with experiments. |
D.Land managers must be ready to take on their responsibility |
A.How to Deal with Orange Peels |
B.How to Improve the Degraded Land |
C.A Fruitful Experiment in Land Conservation |
D.Ways to Protect Tropical Forests Effectively |
增加:在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧),并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除:把多余的词用斜线( \ )划掉。
修改:在错的词下划一横线,并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意:1.每处错误及其修改均仅限一词
2.只允许修改10处,多者(从第11处起)不计分
more tree,there will be less haze in their city. Trees can absorb exhaust fumes (尾气) from cars,thus reduce pollution. Second,the government should punish the factories where produce too many fumes. Exhaust fumes is the main cause of haze and do greatly harm to people’s health. Maybe we can move factories to areas where few people live. Third, I think it was a great idea to encourage people to use public transportation. Last but not least, we can call on citizens ride bikes if they travel short journeys.
提示:随意涂写scribble(n.& v.)乱丢垃圾litter(n.&v.)批评 criticize(v.)
Dear Mr. Headmaster,
I am Li Hua, a student fromClass One,SeniorTwo._____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours faithfully,
Li Hua
用英语写一篇150词左右的短文,要求包括上面所述内容。
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1. 节电、节水;
2. 采用公共交通方式;
3. 不乱扔垃圾,拒绝使用一次性筷子及塑料袋,支持“光盘行动”。
注意:
1. 次数100左右;
2. 可以适当增加细节,以使行文连贯;
3. 开头和结尾已经给出,不计入总词数。
参考词汇:一次性筷子once-off chopsticks ; 光盘行动 “clear your plate” campaign
Dear friends,
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Thank you!
Student Union
9 . Where do you keep ice? In die freezer, of course. That’s what scientists might have thought when they were looking for a safe place to store ice from mountain glaciers from around the world. They’ve decided to store ice in Antarctica because global warming is causing some of the glaciers in places like the Alps to melt.
Jerome Chappellaz of the French National Centre for Scientific Research is involved in creating an ice vault (地下室) there. He says: “We are probably the only scientific community whose sample (样本) is in danger of disappearing from the face of the planet. If you work on rocks or on tree rings, the raw material is still here and will be for many centuries.”
And why do scientists need to study ice from the Alps, for example? Ice formed on the top of a mountain is made of snow accumulated over thousands of years. Trapped air bubbles (气泡) contain samples of the atmosphere that existed when that ice was formed. Ice is a record of climate. By examining ice, we know carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher now than in the last three million years. Researchers use this kind of data to build computer models and try to predict what might happen in the future.
The ice vault will be housed in a snow cave at the Concordia Research Station, which is operated by scientists from France and Italy. The ice samples will be sealed in bags and placed 10 meters below the surface. at a constant temperature of -50℃. This will put the scientists’ minds at rest. Losing the ice samples would be a disaster, and nobody wants to see a mine of scientific knowledge lost forever in a giant pool.
1. What makes Antarctica a safe place to store ice?A.Its large mountains. |
B.Its function as a freezer. |
C.The abundant ice samples there. |
D.The absence of global warming. |
A.it’s necessary to store ice |
B.it’s more valuable to study ice |
C.ice disappears very quickly |
D.ice should be stored at home |
A.To learn about climate. |
B.To learn about the Alps. |
C.To trap air bubbles. |
D.To reduce carbon dioxide. |
A.They consider it an easy job. |
B.They’re not optimistic about it. |
C.They think it will cause disasters. |
D.They think it’s a reliable way. |
10 . Not too long ago, our teacher, being a “tree-hugger”(as the kids call her), had us write an essay on an environmental issue. I was eager to start, but something made me stop.
“What is an environmental issue?” one kid asked. “What if we don’t care about the environment?” another complained. “It’s not like it affects me.”
These comments astounded me. I have always cared about the environment and assumed that others did too. From the surprised look on my teacher’s face, I could tell she felt the same way.
In no time, I finished my essay. In my essay I wrote about logging(伐木), which is an important industry, but if we continue to cut down trees without replacing, it will damage the environment.
There are so many things that we can do to save our world. Recycling, of course, is always a good thing, but not everyone has a recycling plant nearby (I don’t). There are other ways to help the environment. Plant a tree. Don’t waste water.
I can’t stand it when a person’s excuse for not caring is “Nothing is going to happen in my lifetime, so why should I care?” Sure, the chances of something terrible happening are slim, but I want people to realize that if we don’t deal with it, someone will have to eventually. Do you want that to be your children? Or your children’s children?
When my teacher told me to read my essay to my class, I was a little embarrassed because I didn’t want everyone to call me “tree-hugger”. I realize now that if being a tree-hugger means you care about the environment, I’m a tree-hugger 100 percent. I just wish more people were.
1. Why do the students call their teacher “tree-hugger”?A.She likes hugging trees. |
B.She knows a lot about trees. |
C.She grew up in the countryside. |
D.She cares a lot about the environment. |
A.to ask some questions |
B.because of other kids’ comments |
C.to listen to the teacher’s instructions |
D.because he had no idea about the topic |
A.helped | B.changed |
C.shocked | D.interested |
A.what we can recycle |
B.how we can save the earth |
C.why we should protect the earth |
D.what damage we are doing to the earth |
A.the students don’t like the teacher |
B.the teacher liked the author’s essay |
C.the author is ashamed of being a tree-hugger |
D.the author should have written a better essay |