1 . Reducing the workweek to four days could have a climate benefit. In addition to improving the well-being of workers, cutting working hours may reduce carbon emissions. But those benefits would depend on a number of factors, experts emphasize, including how people choose to spend nonworking time.

Commuting and travel

Transportation is the biggest contributor to greenhouse emissions. A November 2021 survey of 2,000 employees and 500 business leaders in the United Kingdom found that if all organizations introduced a four-day week, the reduced trips to work would decrease travel overall by more than 691 million miles a week.

But the climate benefits of less commuting could be eliminated, experts said, if people choose to spend their extra time off traveling, particularly if they do so by car or plane.

Energy usage

Shorter working hours could lead to reductions in energy usage, experts said. According to a 2006 paper, if the United States adopted European work standards, the country would consume about 20 percent less energy.

Energy could also be conserved if fewer resources are needed to heat and cool large office buildings, reducing demands on electricity. For example, if an entire workplace shuts down on the fifth day, that would help lower consumption — less so if the office stays open to accommodate employees taking different days off.

Lifestyle changes

It’s possible that fewer working hours may lead some people to have a larger carbon footprint, but experts say research suggests that most people are likely to shift toward more sustainable lifestyles.

One theory is that people who work more and have less free time tend to do things in more carbon-intensive ways, such as choosing faster modes of transportation or buying prepared foods. Convenience is often carbon-intensive and people tend to choose convenience when they're time-stressed. Meanwhile, some research suggests that those who work less are more likely to engage in traditionally low-carbon activities, such as spending time with family or sleeping.

“When we talk about the four-day workweek and the environment, we focus on the tangible, but actually, in a way, the biggest potential benefit here is in the intangible,” experts said.

1. What is identified as the leading cause of greenhouse emissions according to the passage?

A．The well-being of employees.

B．The conservation of energy.

C．Commuting and travel.

D．The European work standard.

2. What can be inferred from the underlined sentence “the biggest potential benefit here is in the intangible” in the last paragraph?

A．People will have big potential in achieving intangible benefits while working.

B．People are more likely to engage in carbon-intensive activities due to time constraints.

C．People may shift toward more sustainable lifestyles and lower carbon footprints.

D．People may travel more frequently by car or plane during their extra time off.

3. The passage is mainly written to       .

A．highlight the importance of shortening working time in the context of well-being

B．provide an overview of transportation emissions worldwide

C．analyze the impact of reduced working hours on mode of business

D．illustrate factors affecting the climate benefits of a shorter workweek

2 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

The problem of electronic waste

We have gradually come to realise that in two ways in particular, modern hi-tech can be bad for the planet. The first is its energy use; the worldwide scale of information technology is so enormous that electronics now produce fully two percent of global carbon emissions, which is about the same as the highly controversial emissions of aeroplanes. The other is the hardware, when it comes to the end of its natural life. This, increasingly, is pretty short. We have hardly noticed this important stream of waste, so much so that a Greenpeace report on the untraced and unreported e-waste two years ago referred to it as “the hidden flow”. We need to be aware of it.

The latest United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report estimates that worldwide, electronic waste is mounting by about 40 million tons a year. So what can we do about it?

The European Union has recognised the problem by adopting a key principle: producer responsibility. In other words, making it the duty of manufacturers of electronic goods to ensure their safe disposal at the end of their lives. In practice, an EU regulation now means that electronics dealers must either take back the equipment they sold you, or help to finance a network of drop-off points, such as public recycling sites. Its main feature is quite ambitious: it aims to deal with “everything with a plug”.

The new UN report suggests that all countries could do something about the problem with a change in design. Groups such as Greenpeace have led the way in putting pressure on major manufacturing companies to find substitutes for the toxic chemicals inside their products. Encouragingly, they have had some success in forcing them to develop non-poisonous alternatives to these. This may be the real way forward.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________