Beaches across the planet share many features: sand, water, ocean gentle winds — and plastic. At Floyd Bennett Field, the coastal area     1     artist Barry Rosenthal goes collecting, rubbish piles up fast and in layers, as if at an archaeological (考古的) site.

Plastics will indeed be the product of our age,     2     (particular) in oceans where the material goes into ecosystems and floats around the world. More than millions and millions of pieces of plastic already fill the seas, with some nine million tons     3    (add) each year.

Rosenthal observed how bottles,     4    (toy), and food boxes fade, wear out, yet never disappear. He started building and photographing sculptures (雕像) of ocean trash to illustrate the problem of ocean pollution. Finally he began to gather the rubbish to use as his art materials, cleaning     5     small part of the coast over and over again. “I started to just collect as much as I could and go back to my studio to sort       6     out,” he says. Each sculpture has a theme, by color, shape, or intended use, such as the oil containers.

A project begun for aesthetics (美学) has got a     7    (two) purpose: raising social and environmental awareness. Over the last few years, Rosenthal     8    (tour) to speak about ocean pollution and what might help clean it up. The most     9    (meaning) advance, he says, would be to rethink our method of consuming (消费). “We need a change in all packaging design     10    (make) people feel good,” he says.

2 . The tradition of giving gifts didn’t start with the modern holidays we celebrate. Many ancient cultures celebrated holidays with the exchange of gifts. People who love to give gifts often can’t wait until it’s time for the recipients to open their gifts. If you’ve ever been given a gift, you know that part of the fun is the curiosity that builds as you wonder what the gift is.

The wish to hide the identity of a gift until just the right moment led people to wrap gifts long, long ago. Historians believed wrapping gifts in paper probably started not long after paper was invented thousands of years ago.

Wrapping paper like what we use today, though, is a much more recent invention. More than 100 years ago, gifts were usually wrapped in heavy brown paper. Before that, cloth was often used. The technology to mass-produce wrapping paper didn’t come along until the early 1900s. The first American gift wrap company— Hy-Sill Manufacturing Inc. — was founded by Eli Hyman and Morris Silverman in 1903. It wasn’t as easy to wrap presents back then as it is today, though, because adhesive tape (胶带) wasn’t invented until 1930.

Over the years, wrapping paper has developed into what we see in stores each holiday season. But scientists say that the United States alone produces an extra 5 million tons of waste over the holidays, most of which is from wrapping paper and shopping bags. To cut down on this waste, some people carefully unwrap presents, so that the wrapping paper can be reused. Others have started to use reusable gift bags instead of wrapping paper.

3 . Pollution is one of the biggest problems in the world today. In many places, rubbish is thrown into lakes and rivers.     1    

In some cities, the air is filled with pollution.     2     If it is not cleaned up, more people will be hurt.     3     Land and water pollution kills many animals every year.

If we do not act to improve the environment, more living things will be killed by pollution.

    4     We should separate rubbish into different groups. In this way, it can be recycled and reused. We had better plant more trees.     5     What’s more, we shouldn’t put the waste into lakes or rivers.

If we can do these, we will make the world a better place to live in.

4 . Buses take about 24 million children to school in some countries each year. Some parents think they’re the safest way to get the children to school — eight times safer than riding in a passenger car. But what parents don’t expect is that most school buses also pollute the air with tail gas, and that’s bad news for the kids on the bus.

The problem is that children are breathing in tail gas when they play near idling (空转的) school buses or while they ride the bus. Studies show that over time, breathing in tail gas can cause serious health problems — one concern is that the particulate (微小的) matter in tail gas can contribute to many illnesses, plus it’s been linked to increased risk of lung cancer.

There are several different ways to clean up school buses.

A simple change that can make a big difference is to reduce idling by turning off the engine as soon as the bus is parked. Some communities have carried out voluntary “no idling” zones, which help keep the air cleaner for bus riders and everyone else.

Another choice is to switch to cleaner burning fuels. One popular choice is B20. According to the EPA, it reduces particulate matter by about 10 percent. Another clean fuel being used in school buses is natural gas.

One of the best choices for clean buses is to replace older buses with newer, cleaner running buses. Because emission (排放) standards have changed obviously over the last 30 years, you can tell a lot about how much a bus pollutes simply by finding out how old it is. Buses produced after 1990 produce much lower particulate levels than older buses, and those produced in 1994 and later are even cleaner.