1 . A Malawian woman, Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, was recently awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa — the world’s leading award for grassroots environmental activists.

Gloria Majiga-Kamoto was then working for a local environmental organization with a program that gave goats to rural farmers, who would use the goat waste to produce low-cost, high-quality organic fertilizer (肥料). The problem? The thin plastic bags covering the Malawian countryside. “We have this very common street food, chiwaya, which is salty and served in little blue plastics,” Majiga-Kamoto says. “Goats eat the plastic for salty taste and they die because it blocks the ingestion (摄食) system.” For her, this was the moment when it all changed. All of a sudden, she started noticing how plastics were everywhere in the Malawian environment and food system-affecting people’s living and health.

“I remember back in the day when we’d go to the market and buy things like fish, you’d get it in newspapers,” the 30-year-old says. But thin plastics took off in the last decade or so as new producers sprung up in Malawi, selling products like thin plastic bags at cheap prices. In fact, the Malawian government decided to ban the importation, production and distribution of single-use plastic in 2015. But before the ban could go into full effect, Malawi’s plastics-producing industry appealed to the country’s High Court against the ban, causing it to be suspended.

When Majiga-Kamoto and her fellow environmentalists heard about this, they were annoyed. She organized marches and rejected the plastic industry’s argument that the ban would hurt Malawi’s economy — and even debated with an industry spokesman on TV. Finally in 2019, Malawi’s High Court ruled in favor of the ban. The following year, the government began closing down illegal plastic producers.

Michael Sutton, executive director of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, said, “Majiga-Kamoto’s fight with the plastic industry is a perfect example of the spirit of the prize.”

1. What made Majiga-Kamoto realize the problem?

A．Her experience with plastic-eating goats.

B．Her discovery of goat waste everywhere.

C．Her doubt about the safety of street food.

D．Her care for the farmers living in poverty.

2. What can we learn about Malawi?

A．It used to be extremely rich in fish.

B．It advocated using thin plastic bags.

C．It failed to ban single-use plastic at first.

D．It relied heavily on the plastic industry.

3. What was the purpose of Majiga-Kamoto’s acts in Paragraph 4?

A．To put the ban into effect.

B．To support the government.

C．To back the plastic industry up.

D．To promote Malawi’s economy.

4. Which of the following best describes Majiga-Kamoto?

A．Humble.

B．Generous.

C．Patient.

D．Committed.

2 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Chinese scientists have developed a kind of plastic that degrades in sea water and could help slow down the     1    (increase) serious plastic pollution in the ocean.

The new plastic can degrade in sea water over a period ranging from a few days to several hundred days,     2    (leave) small parts that cause no pollution, said Wang Gexia,     3     is a senior engineer. 

For a long time, people focused     4     white pollution on land. Plastic pollution in the sea only caught people’s attention when more and more     5    (report) about marine animals dying from it appeared in recent years.

Scientists combined water dissolution and biodegradation processes     6    (design) and invent     7     new plastic.

The research     8    (select) as one of the winning projects at a contest. The contest encouraged young Chinese scientists to develop groundbreaking technologies and was intended to inspire creativity. 

China has given top attention to     9    (environment) protection, contributing Chinese wisdom to     10    (resolve) global pollution problems.

3 . Two hours west of a perfectly sunny summer’s day in Clackamas, Oregon a foggy breeze awaited me on the Lincoln City coast. After a year of volunteering remotely with Ocean Blue Project, today is a long-awaited beach cleanup.

I didn’t expect to take away more than just trash from the beach cleanup. At first glance, the beach appears clean. However, beach cleanups require much more attention than a quick look over. Within just a couple of hours, 71 of us volunteers managed to pick up 171 pounds of debris. Actually, we’ve got much more than that.

Beach cleanups connect us to nature and provide an escape from the world for a little bit. They also provide a learning opportunity outside of the participation part. When you sit over a pile of—let’s face it—garbage, you pick out one by one the pieces left behind by others. You see first hand the impact we’re having on our environment and account for what is left behind the most. Each cigarette butt and plastic bottle sets the tone for how we should be approaching our everyday lives, which is to stop pollution.

Personally, the time spent by the ocean and away from my phone fills me with peace and calmness as I focus my attention only on the moment, looking for the little devils trying to pollute the ocean. With a pound or two less out of the ocean, I always feel a bit more optimistic about the world to come.

This boots-on-the-sand way of making a difference grants me a feeling of accomplishment and purpose. Rather than pondering the dire task of saving the planet or researching and writing ways to do so, I get to physically make a difference. And there’s nothing that can replace that instant gratification of making positive change for your community and your planet.

After the cleanup, my eyes are now expertly trained to spot loose trash and inorganic materials anywhere I step. Imagine what a huge difference we could all make collectively if we simply stopped and picked up that water bottle or wrapper off the ground instead of passing it by.

1. Which of the following can best describe the author’s first beach cleanup with Ocean Blue Project?

A．Effortless and far-reaching.	B．Annoying but rewarding.
C．Painstaking but fruitful.	D．Demanding and inefficient.

2. According to the text, which of the following is the benefit from our doing beach cleanups?

A．Maintaining good physical health.

B．Gaining great insight into oceans.

C．Developing researching ways to save the earth.

D．Improving our mental health.

3. What does the underlined word “gratification” in Paragraph 5 mean?

A．Satisfaction.	B．Gratitude.
C．Impression.	D．Curiosity.

4. What is the most suitable title for the text?

A．What I’ve Learned from a Beach Cleanup

B．How Well I Performed in a Beach Cleanup

C．How Much Attention a Beach Cleanup Requires

D．Why Volunteering with Ocean Blue Project Matters

5 . 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

6 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan was     1     (severe) damaged by a tsunami in 2011, leading to a major nuclear disaster. Since then, water has been continuously used     2    (cool) the damaged reactors (反应堆) and prevent further damage.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the     3    (operate) of the plant, said that the storage tanks took up too much space due to the wastewater. So Japan initially said that it     4    (begin) releasing the water into the ocean in the spring of 2023.

On March 17, part of the equipment     5    was related to the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant started operation for     6    first time, according to Japanese media TV Asahi.

According to The Guardian, the Japanese government argued that the water     7    (treat) to remove most of the radioactive isotopes (同位素), so the water would be safe to be released into the ocean.

However, not everyone agrees with this decision. Environmental groups and local fishermen have expressed concern about the impact of the wastewater     8    marine life and the fishing industry, the BBC reported.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on March14 once again denounced (谴责) Japan’s unilateral (单边的) decision to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea,     9    (consider) the move an attempt to shift the risk of nuclear pollution to all of mankind.

The ministry also warned the country not to start the plan     10    full consultation (磋商) with its neighbors and relevant international institutions.

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Throughout the world, only 15% of the material that are used to make clothing is properly recycled, according to the Alle SacUrthur Club, an organization in Liverpool, UK, that boosts the circular economy. Most clothing waste—an     1    (estimate) 82 million tonnes from the fashion industry alone-produced every year ends up buried or burnt.

    2    (handle) all that waste, methods to recover and reuse the material are intended as an active response to the future risks by researchers and start-up companies. Much of their focus is on chemical recycling,     3     the material is broken down into its building blocks and applied to create new materials, including fibres that     4     (weave) into new clothes. The challenges lie in     5     (develop) the processes for such treatment. They have to be practical, but they also have to be at least as cost-effective as simply making new fibres.

    6     the natural cellulose fibres from cotton, some other materials include human-made cellulosic fibres. They are derived from wood-pulp cellulose and may be used to produce materials such as viscose (rayon) and a similar material called lyocell.

A change in the manufacturing process is being applied to the textile-waste problem by Essen, a start-up in Seattle, Washington.     7     the company has fundamentally devoted to the process is that it uses discarded textiles, instead of wood, as the source of its cellulose. It has also adjusted the process to produce a fibre that the firm’s co-founder and president Christo Stan says is superior to     8     other cellulosics and cotton, and that can be recycled more times.

Although there are abundant technical challenges, the main barrier     9     widespread textile recycling could be economic, says materials engineer Lijiang Jiang at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “Most of the materials are not that invaluable,” Jiang says. So cheap it is to produce polyester, cotton and other fabrics     10     there’s little profit margin unless the recycling processes themselves are very inexpensive.

9 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

It was a lovely spring morning in the mountains of my home. Here was full of natural atmosphere. The sky was blue, the sun was warm, and the air was fresh. As driving along the winding road, I could see thousands of wild flowers in bloom. When I turned round, I slowed down as I saw some volunteers picking up garbage along the side of the road. I just smiled as I saw them doing some cleaning in spring for Mother Earth and my mind suddenly floated back in time to another spring morning long ago.

When my children were younger, I used to walk along a small route around the lake near my home. It was also on a spring morning that I noticed much garbage lying along the route. The next day, I brought a big garbage bag and started to slowly pick up the garbage along my way. All kinds of deserted objects lay all over the floor. There were pop cans, plastic water bottles, wrappers for candy bars, empty chip bags, pieces of broken fishing line and even an old shoe. Every time I stopped, I picked up a piece of garbage. And I even fished some garbage out of the edge of the water. By the time I circled the lake, the garbage bag had been nearly full.

Tired but happy, I put the bag in an empty garbage can. I stopped before I headed home and took one last look at the lake as the sun set. It looked more beautiful than ever and I felt like the angels were looking down upon it with me and sharing my smiles.

I always think that at times this world’s problems can seem overwhelming and you may wonder what you can do to make a difference. But the truth is that every good thing you do matters a lot! I do believe every time I stop to pick up a single piece of garbage, I can make a difference. As my children are adults now, I decide to spend more time protecting the environment.

注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

I begin to encourage others to develop the environmental awareness.

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Many days have passed, and the surroundings have improved a lot.

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10 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Desertification is a serious problem     1     (face) numerous countries in the world. Shi Guangyin, an eco-warrior from Shanxi Province,     2     (battle) desertification for about 40 years. Born in a town on the southern edge of the Mu Us Desert, Shi remembers how sandstorms easily destroyed the crops the villagers had grown and made their life     3     misery.

In 1984, the government issued new policies to encourage individuals to plant trees in contracted sand lands. Despite the     4     (oppose) of his family, Shi resigned from his leadership position at a state-owned farm and began his fight against desertification.

    5     (initial), Shi met with the challenge of lacking funds. He managed to raise RMB 12,000 by selling all his sheep and borrowing money from door to door.     6     followed was tireless work by Shi and his team, planting several species of drought-enduring trees over sand. Langwosha is an area of about 400 hectares     7     strong winds blow hard all year round. After failing     8     the first two attempts, Shi realized scientific research was also important. In 1988, Shi challenged Langwosha the third time. This time he     9     (equip) with a newly acquired technique, which enabled most of the planted trees, well over 80%,     10     (survive).

“My fight continues as long as my life continues. I shall not stop planting trees until my last breath,” said Shi Guangyin.