2 . How to deal with waste has been a problem since humans started producing it. As more and more people choose to live close together in cities, the waste-disposal problem becomes increasingly difficult.
During the eighteenth century, it was usual for several neighboring towns to get together to select a faraway spot as a dump site (垃圾填埋场). Residents or trash haulers (垃圾拖运者) would transport household rubbish, rotted wood, and old possessions to the site. Periodically some of the trash was burned and the rest was buried. The unpleasant sights and smells caused no problem because nobody lived close by.
Factories, mills, and other industrial sites also had waste to be disposed of. Those located on rivers often just dumped the unwanted remains into the water. Others built huge burners with chimneys to deal with the problem.
Several facts make these choices unacceptable to modern society. The first problem is space. Dumps, which are now called landfills, are most needed in heavily populated areas. Such areas seldom have empty land suitable for this purpose. Land is either too expensive or too close to residential neighborhoods. Long-distance trash hauling has been a common practice, but once farm areas are refusing to accept rubbish from elsewhere, cheap land within trucking distance of major city areas is almost nonexistent.
Awareness of pollution dangers has led to more strict rules of waste disposal. Pollution of rivers, ground water, land and air is a price people can no longer pay to get rid of waste. The amount of waste, however, continues to grow.
Recycling efforts have become commonplace, and many towns require their people to take part. Even the most efficient recycling programs, however, can hope to deal with only about 50 per cent of a city’s reusable waste.
1. The most suitable title for this passage would be “ _________ ”.
| A．Places for Disposing Waste | B．Waste Disposal Problem |
| C．Ways of Getting Rid of Waste | D．Waste Pollution Dangers. |
2. During the 18th century, people disposed their waste in many ways EXCEPT ______.
| A．recycling it | B．burying it |
| C．burning it | D．throwing it into rivers |
3. It can be inferred from the fourth paragraph that in modern society ______.
| A．farm areas willingly accept waste from the city |
| B．there is cheap land to bury waste |
| C．ways to deal with waste stay the same as those in the past |
| D．it is no longer possible to have landfills, even in rural areas |
4. The main purpose of writing this article is to ______.
| A．suggest a better way to get rid of waste |
| B．warn people of the pollution dangers we are facing |
| C．call on people to take part in recycling programs |
| D．draw people’s attention to waste management |
