1 . Naturalist Enzo Suma, who is now 40, lives in Puglia, a region in southern Italy whose long coastline faces the Adriatic Sea. Floating waste accumulates in this relatively enclosed part of the Mediterranean, unlike the open ocean, where the waste tends to be spread over a vast area. Feeling concerned about that, Suma makes it a habit to pick up the washed-up waste along the shore, especially after big winter storms.

One day, Suma was walking along the beach near his home when he discovered a bottle of Coke. Suma noticed on the bottle that the price, clearly printed on the bottom, was in lire, a currency (货币) that hadn’t been used in Italy since it was replaced by the euro in 2002. Could a plastic container have well survived in the Mediterranean, he wondered, for about two decades?

That led him to founding the Archeoplastica museum. It has a collection of about 500 unique pieces recovered from Italian shores and the Coke bottle is the first one of them. All collection demonstrates the unsettling life force of plastic waste in the environment. “Seeing that a product people may have used 30, 40, or 50 years ago remains still unchanged, you’ll feel different. It’s a great shock,” Suma said to a reporter. So Suma often exhibits selected pieces from the Archeoplastica collection at local schools around his hometown of Ostuni.

“The playful side of the work allows you to arrive at the less beautiful side of things,” Suma acknowledged. “Plastic is a kind of useful substance. But it’s unthinkable that a water bottle, made from a material designed to last so long, can be used for just a few days—or even minutes—before becoming garbage. Clean the beaches. Clean the oceans. Recycle. But if we are still throwing out plastics, none of those are going to be long-term solutions.”

1. What’s Suma’s concern about his living place?

A．Its long coastline is disappearing.	B．Big storms frequently hit the area.
C．Floating waste spreads over a vast area.	D．The waste pollution on shore is worsening.

2. What can be learned about the objects in the Archeoplastica museum?

A．They have a history of more than half a century.

B．They were quite valuable before turning into waste.

C．They’re more like educational exhibits than garbage.

D．They have stronger life force than ordinary plastic products.

3. Which of the following can best describe Enzo Suma?

A．Creative, devoted and socially responsible.	B．Enthusiastic, ambitious and adventurous.
C．Generous, cautious and humorous.	D．Curious, efficient and playful.

4. What does Suma intend to tell us by his words in the last paragraph?

A．The birth of plastics has greatly served humans.

B．The key to tackling the plastic pollution is to stop littering.

C．The plastic problem can be solved by cleaning and recycling.

D．People should be more aware of the powerful functions of plastics.

2 . This year, why not think of Earth Day as being like New Year’s Day?     1     Make a plan to do things differently and do something for our mother Earth. Keep on doing one of these for a year and see how it affects your health and the world.

Send your kids out to play. Sign up for the 1,000 hours challenge, where families accumulate (积累) 1,000 hours of outdoor play in a year.     2    Your children will be happier, healthier, and more connected to nature.

Learn how to cook five easy main dishes well. By promoting your kitchen skills and developing some of your own recipes, you won’t be so much interested in take outs and all the related packaging waste.    3    

    4     Download the Poshmark app onto your phone or visit the ThredUp website before ordering new clothing or shoes online. There are so many companies that there’s a good chance that you’ll find exactly what you need. Visit Facebook Marketplace, local exchanging sites, and more to find what you need in your daily life.

Walk or bike, don’t drive.    5     It will require making time adjustments, but if you view that time as an investment in mental and physical health, it’s not so hard to schedule. If you can sell a car, you might be able to justify purchasing an e-bike, which makes low-carbon travel even more accessible and fun.

A．Shop second-hand.

B．Try some zero waste beauty products.

C．It’s a chance to make a lifestyle change.

D．If that’s too much, aim for two hours of daily outdoor play.

E．Discover the satisfaction that comes with using what you have.

F．See if you can use your own leg power for all trips under three miles.

G．And you will be more likely to use up food in your fridge before it goes bad.

4 . With needle-like teeth and sharp pointed nose, a gray nurse shark isn’t a creature that most people would want to meet. But Shalise Leesfield isn’t one of them.

The Australian teenager couldn’t think of a better creature to meet when scuba diving off the coast of South West Rocks, near her home in Port Macquarie, a coastal town north of Sydney.

“Many people say gray nurse sharks look frightening, but I think they are the sweetest animals ever,” she says.

The slow-moving sharks, which like to stay near the sea floor in warm, shallow waters, are — for the most part — harmless to humans. But the gray nurse shark is under threat. Populations have fallen and habitats have been lost due to ocean warming and human development, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which lists the species as seriously endangered.

One area where they can still be seen is Fish Rock, an underwater cavern (洞穴) with a unique ecosystem, 40 miles up the coast from Leesfield’s home. But fishers are allowed access within 200 meters of Fish Rock. This is leading to a drop in the number of gray nurse sharks and increased pollution, says Leesfield. She wants to enlarge the no-fishing area, establishing a protected zone.

With Leesfield’s efforts, the area has been nominated as a Hope Spot, which is part of the mission Blue program launched by famous oceanographer Sylvia Earle that identifies places as critically important to the ocean’s health and supports protection.

“When people think about Hope Spots, they think about Sydney Harbour or the Great Barrier Reef. So to get Fish Rock up on that list is just such incredible news,” she says.

Now, Leesfield is working with politician Cate Faehrmann, marine spokesperson for the Australian Greens party in New South Wales, to legalize protection of the sharks and make the no-fishing zone protected by the law.

1. What does “them” refer to in the first paragraph?

A．Gray nurse sharks.	B．Common people.
C．People fearing gray nurse sharks.	D．Fishers.

2. What has led to gray nurse sharks’ being seriously endangered?

A．The development of tourism in the ocean.

B．The sharks’ preference to stay in shallow waters.

C．The feature of gray nurse sharks’ slow-moving.

D．Fishers’ being permitted within 200 meters of Fish Rock.

3. What will Leesfield and Faehrmann do to protect gray nurse sharks?

A．Recommend the Fish Rock as a Hope Spot being protected.

B．Identify the Hope Spot area as being critically important.

C．Make Fish Rock more popular among fishers nearby.

D．Make laws to protect the no-fishing zone near Fish Rock.

4. Which might be the best title of the article?

A．The Australian teenager is on a mission to protect sharks

B．Increased pollution leads to gray sharks endangered

C．Gray nurse sharks are in danger!

D．Let’s establish a protected zone!

5 . Laura Madden is a small business owner and sustainable fashion advocate. “ReFashioned Art is a purpose-driven business, combining style and sustainability (可持续性),” Madden says,“I love fashion, but I also care deeply about the environment.”

She slowly built her network and became an influencer who ran a popular blog. She shares that her passion for sustainability came about in 2015 when she watched a life-changing documentary about the social and environmental issues brought up by the fashion industry. “My guilty pleasures－ shopping and fashion － that I assumed weren’t hurting anyone, were in reality hurting a lot of people,” she says.“I couldn’t stand the fact that something I loved so much was creating so much suffering on the planet. How could something that brought me so much beauty and joy be so dirty and destructive?”

With this realization, Madden became an advocate for sustainable fashion－including purchasing most of her own clothes second-hand and supporting sustainable brands. Although she was busy enough in 2019, she became a professional artist, creating pieces made from sustainable materials.

She notes that ReFashioned Art is first and foremost an art brand. “I am using my work to tell a story and create a narrative that style and sustainability can co-exist,” she says. “By repurposing old items into something more fashionable, elegant, and contemporary, I hope to inspire you to look for beauty where it is not normally found.”

For those interested in supporting sustainable art and fashion. Madden shares,“Get creative and look for beauty. Looking forward, I would love to partner with more designers.”

She adds,“We only have finite resources. The best thing we can all do is ask, ‘How else can I use this item?’”

1. What inspired Madden to be an advocate for sustainable fashion?

A．The popular blog she ran.

B．An unforgettable personal experience.

C．A documentary that changed her life.

D．A business with a specific purpose.

2. What does Madden think of ReFashioned Art?

A．It focuses on both fashion and humans.

B．It’s a combination of fashion and old tradition.

C．It’s inspiring and instructive as an art style.

D．It cares little about social and environmental issues.

3. What does Madden do to promote sustainable fashion?

A．She partners with many designers.

B．She writes as many stories as possible.

C．She purchases brand-new clothes all the time.

D．She transforms old things into more modern ones.

4. What does the underlined word “finite” in the last paragraph mean?

A．Limited.

B．Enormous.

C．Valuable.

D．Fashionable.

6 . Last fall, the Great Salt Lake hit its lowest level since record keeping began. The lake sank to nearly six meters below the long-term average. The lake’s shrinking threatens to upend the ecosystem, disturbing the migration and survival of 10 million birds, including ducks and geese.

Duck hunters aren’t the only ones worried about the Great Salt Lake. The decades-long decline in lake level is raising alarm bells for millions of people who live in the region. The low lake level and increasing salts in the lake water threaten to destroy economic mainstays like agriculture, tourism and mining. Exposed salts can also reduce air quality and so threaten public health.

Saline lakes (咸水湖) are terminal lakes. They have no rivers flowing out of them. As water disappears, salts are left behind. At the same time, the people who live in these deserts use freshwater for crops, homes and industry. Residents get water from streams and rivers into canals, pipelines or reservoirs before it reaches the lakes. And as the lakes shrink, the salt in water increases.

Lake Poopo, a highland lake in Bolivia that used to stretch 90 kilometers long and 32 kilometers wide, is now a salty mud flat. The Aral Sea shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, once the world’s fourth largest lake, has at times in recent decades shrunk to a tenth of its historic 68,000-square-kilometer surface area. Some saline lakes, like Nevada’s Winnemucca Lake, dried up so long ago — the waters that fed it were led to agricultural fields — that most people have forgotten they were ever wet.

The good news is that people still have time to halt the Great Salt Lake’s decline by using less water. Cutting agricultural and other outdoor water use by a third to half through a combination of voluntary conservation measures and policy changes would allow the lake to refill enough to support the region’s economy, ecology and quality of life. If this succeeds, the Great Salt Lake can be a model for how to save other saline lakes around the world.

1. What do we know about the Great Salt Lake from the first two paragraphs?

A．It is home to ducks.	B．It will disappear soon.
C．It will be less important.	D．It’s been shrinking for years.

2. What does Paragraph 3 mainly tell us about saline lakes?

A．Their current states.	B．The challenges they face.
C．Measures to restore them.	D．Reasons why they become saltier.

3. What does the underlined word “halt” in the last paragraph probably mean?

A．Stop.

B．Boost.

C．Adapt.

D．Learn.

4. What can be the best title of this text?

A．The Great Salt Lake Is Getting Smaller

B．The World Is Becoming Drier and Drier

C．Saline Lakes Need Freshwater Deadly

D．Many Lakes in the World will Disappear

8 . After being driven to near extinction, wolves are back in Washington state.

Wolf 32M, called The Old Guy by wolf specialist Ben Maletzke, lived some 12 years as the patriarch (族长) of the Teanaway Pack, kicking off the recovery of wolves in Washington. The pack’s territory was roasted by wildfire in 2014. But wolf 32M and his family remained in existence, bringing the call of the wild back for the first time in a century. These wolves are what Maletzke calls stepping stones in recovery — the animals that could help lead the way to new territory not yet repopulated by wolves.

Wolves spread to new territory to find mates and begin packs of their own. It is this pack dynamic that wildlife biologists are counting on, in time, to urge wolves into areas where they do not presently live. “We just need a couple to pick up and go,” Maletzke says.

All along, the Teanaway pack has stayed mostly out of trouble probably, helped by a lot of range riding (牧区巡逻) intended to help reduce conflicts over wolf recovery by keeping wolves away from cattle. “He is an example of wolves living and doing what they do, even around people,” Maletzke says of wolf 32M.

Story Warren, a student at the University of Montana, was just a girl when she first saw 32M’s tracks in the Teanaway River Valley — an exciting encounter that helped generate a serious interest in wildlife that now fuels her studies. To her, the return of the wolf is about more than the species; it is about recovering something even bigger: hope.

“Growing up in my generation, there is so much bad ecological news, a lot of hopelessness about climate change and loss of biodiversity and extinctions,” Warren says, “To have something as wild as wolves coming back to Washington is very encouraging for me — just to know such an amazing and powerful creature exists.”

1. Why does Maletzke call Wolf 32M family “stepping stones”?

A．They are nearly dying out.	B．They are victims of wildfire.
C．They are worth protection.	D．They are pioneers in wolf recovery.

2. What function does paragraph 3 serve?

A．To present a result.	B．To clarify a concept.
C．To offer an explanation.	D．To make a prediction

3. What can be learned from the example of the Teanaway pack?

A．Wolves face a lot of trouble.

B．Wolf recovery counts on its population.

C．Certain measures to ensure cattle safety are required.

D．Wolves should be forbidden from human residence.

4. What does Warren think of the coming back of wolves?

A．It fuels more studies on wildlife.	B．It clears up bad ecological news.
C．It worsens climate change.	D．It excites hope for the ecosystem.

10 . Where does food waste go? In most countries around the world, it goes into landfills (垃圾填埋场). But not in South Korea. The country banned food waste in landfills nearly 20 years ago and today, it is turned into animal feed, fertilizers and fuel.

Around the globe, 1.4 billion tons of food is thrown away every year. The waste goes into landfills where it can pollute the land and water as well as releasing methane — a greenhouse gas — into the air. In fact, food waste is the third-largest source of methane in the US.

The system that is in place in South Korea keeps almost 100 percent of unused food out of landfills. While other cities and local governments have put similar plans in place, it is not done anywhere else on a country-wide basis.

There are two reasons why South Korea passed laws to carry out mandatory (强制性的) recycling of food waste. First, the country’s cooking tradition of numerous small dishes resulted in large amounts of uneaten food. This food waste went into landfills. But the country’s mountainous geography didn’t allow for enough landfills to be built. That’s why the government forced recycling of paper and plastic in 1995 but food waste continued to be buried in landfills. But it was the neighbors of these landfills that demanded that another solution be found due to the very unpleasant smell from rotting food. The government banned organic waste from landfills in 2005. Another law that was passed in 2013 banned dumping liquid food waste in the ocean.

The system is not free but most of the cost is absorbed by the country. People can buy yellow recycling bags that are picked up on the roadside and some local governments have placed autonomous food waste collectors that require residents to pay a weight-based fee by using cards.

The food waste is collected from the bins every day except Sunday. Some of it is used to make animal feed or fertilizers and some is used to make fuel.

1. What phenomenon does the author describe in paragraph 2?

A．The US is worried about landfills.	B．Landfills are the most common.
C．Greenhouse gas is hard to avoid.	D．Food waste can cause much harm.

2. What does the author want to say in paragraph 3?

A．Other governments don’t plan to recycle food waste.

B．100 percent of food waste goes into landfills worldwide.

C．South Korea is successful in dealing with the unused food.

D．South Korea should follow others’ way of building the system.

3. What probably led to the ban in 2005?

A．Some people’s appeal.	B．Insufficient landfill sites.
C．Unhealthy traditional diets.	D．Large amounts of food waste.

4. How can people respond to the ban on waste from landfills?

A．By avoiding using cards.	B．By purchasing recycling bags.
C．By paying the cost of collectors.	D．By picking up waste on the roadside.