1 . Garbage sorting (分类) has become a hot topic around China, especially after Shanghai began carrying out a regulation (规章) on July 1.

Beijing has been expected to do the same. At present the regulation gives garbage sorting responsibilities to government departments, property management groups and other organizations. It also gives rules for companies, explaining how they’re responsible for waste collection, transportation and treatment. Citizens are free of responsibilities for the moment.

The long-awaited revision will soon change the situation. “Taking out the trash without sorting it properly will be illegal,” said Sun Xinjun, director of the Beijing Commission of Urban Management. In Shanghai, violators (违背者) are now fined up to 200 yuan for trash-sorting violations. “The maximum fine in Beijing will not be less than that,” he said.

The Beijing city government first promoted garbage sorting in 2009. Authorities have since called on citizens to sort their household waste into four types—recyclable waste, kitchen trash, dangerous waste and others , and leave it in a colored dustbin or trash can. Blue-colored dustbins are for recyclable items, green for kitchen trash, red for dangerous materials and grey for other waste.

To promote the awareness of garbage sorting and expand the base of participants, authorities have employed workers to help citizens. With intelligent devices, those who throw in recyclable waste at given places will be rewarded with bonus points, which can be used to buy daily goods. At some communities, there are no color-coded dustbins. Instead, a scheduled garbage collection service is offered to help improve the environment. In other communities, workers offer a door-to-door service to collect recyclable or kitchen waste.

Beijing Environmental Sanitation Engineering Group has been promoting new garbage sorting facilities such as recycling cabinets and smart kitchen waste trash cans since 2016, Xinhua News Agency reported.

2 . Universities are doing everything they can to become a green campus. But there are also items students can do to make your campus more eco-friendly.

Recycle everything, especially paper!

There is a large amount of paper a college student goes through every term.     1     We know that these things can’t be avoided, but the way you handle the use of all the paper can really help create a better green campus.

Buy green.

    2     Paper, cleaning products and water are products that can be bought as recycled goods. They’re slightly more expensive than the normal products, but they’re worth buying to make a green campus.

Walk and bike to school.

Most campuses, especially those that are trying to become a more eco-friendly campus,have pretty good public transit (公共交通系统).     3     Walking or biking will help make your campus a green university.

    4    

A water bottle can be refilled at any water fountain and can easily be drunk in class or while riding a bike. This will protect the environment by decreasing the amount of plastic waste on your campus.

Buy used clothing.

It is usually thought of as something to do to save money.     5     Recycling clothes minimizes the amount of resources to make clothing and puts a dent in the problem of worldwide sweatshops.

I was one of the people     1     work on Qinghai­Tibet Railway，which was completed by     2     (overcome) the most difficult engineering challenges to protect the delicate ecosystem.To allow animals to move     3     (safe) and freely，thirty­three passages have been built.To prevent damage to wetlands and grasslands,675 bridges，which is about 160 kilometres in     4     (long)，were build and 140,000 square metres of wetland     5     (move) to protect its distinct ecosystem.Tanggula Station，    6     (locate) at over 5,000 metres above sea level，is the highest railway station in the world.To keep us     7     (health)，several oxygen­making stations were constructed.To protect Cuona Lake     8     construction waste，a twenty­kilometre wall was built.Thanks to our     9     (effort)，passengers who have been attracted by the Qinghai­Tibet Plateau，have been enjoying these     10     (magic) landscapes.

4 . We're often reminded of the importance of protecting the planet as we see it for future generations — and children at St Oswald's CE Primary School Chester certainly agree.

Nine-year-old Isohel Kelleher from the school's Hummingbirds class thinks adults need to take notes. "Sometimes they can be busy and I don't think they think they can make a difference, but if everyone does a little bit it all adds up," she tells Huff Post UK. "We started looking at plastic pollution in our oceans and the things like plastic bags that are polluting them, " she says. "Fish can eat the plastic and they can die, or we might even eat the fish ourselves. ”

Mr Timms, Isohel's teacher, has been leading a new project at the school which lets children loose creatively to raise the awareness of the need to be more environmentally friendly. The entire Hummingbirds class, which is made up of nine-year-old and ten-year-old pupils, has been busy writing poems and creating online videos to warn adults about the serious situation of our oceans and wildlife.

Mr Timms thinks children play an important role in teaching us how to take care of the things around us. "We sometimes overlook how much we can really learn from children," he says. "It is really hard to believe having parents come in saying that their children have been asking them to stop using plastic and to recycle more, and even stopping them using plastic straws. ”

Mr Timms is proud of his Hummingbirds class. "The message that they would like to send to the world is simple: stopping this isn't someone else's job, and it won't be OK if we just leave it."

5 . It should be one of the main goals in today’s society to reduce plastic consumption. Though many believe recycling will solve the problem, and continue using plastic, it’s actually the opposite. In 2013, 254 million tonnes of trash was produced in the U.S. alone, and only around 30% was recycled. This means the rest ended up in a landfill and will stay there for up to 1000 years.

Now Asian countries, including Vietnam and Thailand, are looking for new ideas to avoid plastic. One of those ideas was a new, eco-friendly way to pack their goods by avoiding plastic packaging. One of Perfect Homes Chiangmai’s team members noticed a creative way to reduce plastic that a supermarket called Rimping Supermarket was using. Little did he know that people all around the world would absolutely love this idea. “I just entered to get a few items while we were waiting to sign some contracts with our lawyer, who was delayed. When I noticed the vegetables wrapped in banana leaves and simply liked the idea. So I took a few pictures and posted them online,” he said.

With more than 3.5 million views and over 17 thousand shares, the idea became something people can encourage more supermarkets to implement (实施).

Some have noticed that not everything on the shelves is completely plastic-free to which the supermarket responded that they are taking one step at a time, but it’s not that easy. Many products come to the supermarkets pre-packaged and many companies are interested in wrapping their produce in plastic since it is the cheapest and the easiest option.

It’s now up to the shoppers to show the supermarket which they prefer. If everyone opts for the banana leaf packaging, they will probably stop stocking the items in plastic.

7 . If you turn over a plastic bottle, like those we use to drink water, you’ll notice a number “1”—that means it’s made of a material called PET. Some bags, like the kind that holds milk or coffee, get a “2”，meaning they’re made of a material called HDPE. At material recovery factories, plastics get sorted (分类) based on these numbers (they go up to 7)，which shows how recyclable (可回收的) they are.

Plastic marking numbers 1 and 2 are recyclable. They can be made into carpet, clothing, plastic package, as well as other products, according to Live Science.

Recycling gets more difficult with higher numbers, called “mixed plastic”. This waste makes up 69% of all the plastic we use in the daily life. It’s much more expensive to deal with than numbers 1 and 2. In the past, mixed plastics would be sent to other countries. But two years ago, almost no country was allowed to buy foreign plastic waste.

Recycling companies had to find a new market, but many failed. For example, in Los Angeles, recycling companies still won’t recycle any plastics with numbers higher than 2. Instead, they are burying or burning them.

According to Live Science, what the USA needs is machines that can be used to recycle other kinds of plastic. But Hocevar, a scientist, comes up with a different solution: “The really simple answer is there isn’t so much throwaway plastic in the world.”

Someone may ask, “Is recycling worth it?” For bottles with “1” or “2”, the answer is “yes”, said Hocevar. There’s also a growing market for plastics marked “5”, a flexible (灵活的) plastic that includes yogurt containers (酸奶容器). For other numbers, the answer was simpler; a “no” on numbers 3, 4, 6 and 7.

9 . The Tokyo Summer Olympics is going green. The 5,000 medals Japan has made are more special than most.

One novel focus of the Tokyo Olympics is to be “sustainable”— to avoid using too many natural resources, so that the games are easy on the environment. As part of this goal, the organizers decided to make all of the Olympic medals out of metal recycled from old electronics.

Almost all electronics are made with small amounts of “precious metals”, like gold and silver. But collecting enough of these metals to make 5,000 medals was a huge challenge. That’s because the amount of metal in each device is tiny. It would take about 20,000 cell phones to get just 1 kilogram of gold.

Beginning in April 2017, the organizers placed collection boxes around the country, and asked people to turn in their old electronic devices. Soon people began to respond to the initiative, turning in smartphones, digital cameras, hand-held games, and laptops. At first, collection went slowly, but soon more and more areas began to take part. By the end, 1,621 local governments had helped out with the collection process.

Then came the job of breaking those devices down into smaller pieces. After being taken apart and sorted, the small electronics were smelted (熔炼) to get all the gold, silver, and bronze elements. This is a tricky job, which calls for careful attention and good skill. It’s also dangerous, because some of the metals and other things aren’t safe for people to touch or breathe.

By the end of March, 2019, the organizers had hit their targets of getting enough metal for the medals. They had collected around 32 kilograms of gold, 4,100 kilograms of silver and 2,200 kilograms of bronze. And now all the 5,000 medals are available for the would-be winners.