3 . Understanding the link between a clean environment and human life is not a new concept. In fact, it was noticed as early as ancient Rome. Today we see how green living has infiluenced our everyday lives. There is a growing community of people who embrace a zero waste lifestyle and make changes to the way they live to reduce their carbon footprint.

Living a zero waste lifestyle means doing one’s best to achieve the aim of not sending anything to a landfill. People who adopt this lifestyle ultimately cut down on their waste by reducing what they need and want. They reuse what they own, sending few things to be recycled.

Many people who adopt the zero waste lifestyle claim to be frustrated by the many harmful chemical substances found in beauty and cleaning products. They also find the uses of disposable items and excessive packaging. For example, how many times have we had to peel away layers of plastic wrap and cardboard before finally taking out the item which we had bought? Instead of buying pre-packed food and goods, those who identify with the zero waste philosophy tend to shop in stores that allow them to make purchases and bring their own cloth bags and glass jars to store their purchases.

Many people may have the misconception that it is easier to live a zero waste lifestyle in the West. Nevertheless, Malaysian environmental journalist, Ms. Aurora Tin, has proven that a zero waste lifestyle is possible even in the Asian context. Instead of going to the supermarket to buy pre-packaged foods, Ms. Tin now visits the wet market and brings her own bags for vegetables. She has even stopped using store-bought toothpaste and makes her own toothpaste from coconut oil and baking soda. This lifestyle may be too big a change for the average person, but we could follow her suit to make gradual changes to our own lives.

5 . Farms are battlefields, forcing growers to fight against greedy pests and aggressive weeds in never- ending, costly campaigns that often involve chemical weapons. Those weapons also harm innocent bystanders such as bees and fish. Now, a study chart's impressive shifts in recent decades as U. S. farmers have changed their types of pesticides. Birds and mammals have been affected less, whereas pollinators are suffering. The toxic (有毒的) impact on land plants has also increased sharply, likely because farmers are using increasing kinds of chemicals to fight weeds that have become resistant to common herbicides( 除草剂).

As a research shows, in recent decades, the amount of pesticides used in the United States has gone down by about 40% . But active ingredients have become more powerful. For example, fast-acting pesticides are very toxic. Some require as lite as 6 grams per hectare, compared with several kilograms of the older pesticides. Ralf Schulz, an ecotoxicologist, wondered whether overall toxicity in the ecosystem had changed. A few studies had looked at certain compounds and organisms, but nothing had been done on a national scale.

Schulz and colleagues started with U. S. Geological Survey data on self- reported pesticide use by U. s. farmers from 1992 to 2016. They also gathered toxicity data from the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency on those same compounds-381 in all, The good news is that total toxicity decreased more than 95%, for birds and mammals from 1992 to 2016, largely because of the phaseout (逐步停止) of older pesticides. Toxicity for fish declined by less- about one-third.

Schulz hopes more researches will help policymakers and others think more about the complexity of pest and weed control, and wild species, in order to reduce unintentional harm. The rising toxicity in plants could lead to less diverse habitat and food resources that eventually spread to animal populations, potentially causing losses. “The patterns in the U. S. pesticide use and toxicity data should be a warning for the rest of the world, much of which seems to be leaning more heavily on pesticide use rather than ecological interactions for pest control,” Schulz said.

6 . Call it a surprise: Hurricane Michael strengthened unusually quickly before hitting the Florida panhandle, a long and thin landmass surrounding the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, on October 10,2018, and remained abnormally strong as it swept into Georgia. The storm made landfall with strong winds of about 250 kilometers per hour, just shy of a category 5 storm, making it the strongest storm ever to hit the area, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center, or NHC.

Warm ocean waters are known to fuel hurricanes violence by adding heat and moisture (湿气);the drier air over landmasses, comparatively, can help reduce a storm's strength. So hurricanes nearing the Florida panhandle tended to weaken. But waters in the Gulf that were about 1 degree to 2 degrees Celsius warmer than average for this time of year, as well as abundant moisture in the air over the eastern United States, helped to strengthen Michael. Despite some wind conditions that scientists expected to weaken the storm, it strengthened steadily until it made landfall, which the NHC noted "defies(违背)traditional logic", The fast-moving storm weakened only slightly, to a category 3, before sweeping into Georgia.

Although it is not possible to attribute(把......归因于)the generation of any one storm to climate change, scientists have long predicted that warming ocean waters would lead to more fierce tropical cyclones(热带飓风)in the future. More recent attribution studies have confirmed that prediction, suggesting that very warm waters in the tropical Atlantic helped to fuel 2017's powerful storm season, which caused hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Hurricane Harvey, fueled by unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico in August 2017 ,also underwent a rapid intensification(增强),strengthening from a tropical storm to a category 4 hurricane within about 30 hours. And in 2018 scientists reported that Hurricane Florence, which hit the Carolinas in September 2018, was probably warmer and wetter due to warmer than average sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean.

7 . The idea of billions of people going through a few masks a week during this pandemic definitely rings alarm bells, but a team of researchers in Melbourne may have the solution.

They’ve discovered that adding millions of discarded face masks to road-paving (铺路) mixtures would actually lower the cost of the road, while preventing billions of them from landfills. Just one kilometer of road would need three million masks, and the polypropylene (聚丙烯) plastic used to make single-use surgical face masks also increased the flexibility and durability of the road.

The new material is a mixture of about 2% torn masks, with recycled concrete aggregate (RCA)—a material obtained from waste concrete and other minerals from destroyed buildings. This recycled material was found in the study to be ideal for two of the four layers generally required to create roadways. Paving a kilometer of two-way road with the RCA and three million face masks would result in a change of 93 tons of waste from landfills.

The final product then is more resistant to wear than asphalt (沥青), as well as being cheaper too, provided there was a method for collecting masks. The research team did a cost-analysis and found that, at $26 per ton, the RCA was about half the cost of mining raw materials, and as much as a third of the cost of shipping the used masks to a landfill.

The widespread application would be ideal for large infrastructure (基础设施) projects. For example, Washington has the 11th worst roads in terms of unaddressed repairs in the U.S. If the damaged roads in Washington state were repaired with the RCA/mask mixture, it would reuse nearly 10 billion masks, sparing American landfills hundreds of millions of tons of trash.

It’s said that the team is looking for private industry partners or governments willing to give their plastic mask road an opportunity for a large-scale test.

Monaco is a tiny country in Southern Europe. It is also the second     1    (small) country in the world after the Vatican. One third of the population in Monaco     2    (be) millionaires.

Due to its small size, the country     3    (make) use of land from the Mediterranean Sea since the 1880s. It was only in the 1960s and 1970s     4    broader land reclamation(开垦) took place. The entire district now known as Fontvielle was totally reclaimed from the sea.

Now Monaco plans to expand     5    (it) size even more. They develop a new neighborhood known as Portier Cove. The     6    (construct) already started in 2017 when marine sediment (海洋沉积物)was removed,     7    (expose) the rocky seafloor to lay the foundations.

The project aims to be finished by 2026. Portier Cove will house up to 1,000 people in luxury homes. The area will also include a marina(码头),a park and     8    awesome public place for walking.

Some experts, who show disapproval of the project, argue that there could be damage     9    the sea life and that the marine ecosystem may     10    (replace) by dry land. To reduce the risk of damage, an artificial reef will be constructed and rare shells and grasses have already been relocated.

9 . China starts to give heavy fines to those who disobey the nation's restrictions on disposable plastic products, including single-use plastic bags and straws. Many restaurant brands have tried to replace plastic straws with eco-friendly ones. Luckily for us, there is no shortage of options. While they may not be as fun and convenient as disposable plastic straws, it's time for everyone to play their part in no longer hurting our planetary ecosystem by choosing convenience over responsibility.

Glass straws

Dirt can be spotted through glass. And glass straws are quite comfortable to drink from, but can be easily broken if you're not too careful when handling them. You may also feel it inconvenient to carry a glass straw around with you wherever you go.

Stainless steel straws

The stainless steel straw is very strong thanks to its base material, and thus can be reused and cleaned thoroughly without damaging its surface. While being strong gives stainless steel straws one point over glass straws, their opaque (不透明的)look makes it impossible for us to see whether the inside is dirty or not.

Bamboo straws

Bamboo is a very durable, strong type of wood, and can be easily recycled. Bamboo straws are usually made without any plasticizer. However, the drawback of using this type of straw is its tendency to accumulate mold(霉菌)in the wet environment.

Silicone(硅酮)straws

Silicone straws are soft, flexible and most never break. They're very easy to clean, fun-looking, and especially popular among children. However, silicone is said to be something of a hybrid between a synthetic(合成的)rubber and a synthetic plastic polymer, which menus it's still a plastic.