2 . If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America - and their Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic-wrapped snacks, their plastic waste would likely still be around four centuries later. Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world’s oceans today, waiting to be eaten by some fish or oyster, and finally perhaps by one of us.
Because plastic wasn’t invented until the late 19th century, and its production only really took off around 1950, we have a mere 9. 2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6. 9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a surprising 6. 3 billion tons never made it to a recycling bin - the figure that shocked the scientists who published the numbers in 2017.
No one knows how much unrecycled plastic waste ends up in the ocean, the earth’s last sink. In 2015, Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering professor, caught everyone’s attention with a rough estimate: between 5. 3 million and 14 million tons of plastic waste each year just come from coastal regions.
Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine( 海 洋 的 )animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. Some are harmed visibly, stuck by abandoned things made of plastic. Many more are probably harmed invisibly. Marine species of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, now eat microplastics, the bits smaller than one-fifth of an inch across.
“This isn’t a problem where we don’t know what the solution is,” says Ted Siegler, a Vermont resource economist who has spent more than 25 years working with developing nations on garbage. “We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to deal with it. We know how to recycle.” It’s a matter of building the necessary institutions and systems, he says, ideally before the ocean turns into a thin soup of plastic.
1. Why does the author mention the Pilgrims in paragraph 1?
| A．To prove plastic was difficult to invent. |
| B．To introduce what marine animals like eating. |
| C．To tell the Pilgrims contributed a lot to the marine protection. |
| D．To show plastic waste has a lasting effect on the ocean. |
2. What’s the main trouble marine animals face according to the text?
| A．Lacking protection. | B．Being stuck by plastics. |
| C．Being caught by humans. | D．Treating plastics as food. |
3. What does Ted Siegler want to tell us in the last paragraph?
| A．Some people don’t know the solution of plastics waste. |
| B．Plastics will turn the ocean into a soup of plastic. |
| C．It’s time to take measures to deal with plastic waste. |
| D．People should avoid using plastics to protect the ocean. |
4. From which is the text probably taken?
| A．A biology textbook. | B．A travel brochure. |
| C．An environmental report. | D．A lifestyle magazine. |
