1 . Many people love gum(口香糖). Delicious as it is, the dirty waste can be a problem for humans. The main material for gum cannot break down naturally. Lots of gum waste ends up being thrown away into the rivers and grounds each year.
Now thanks to the company, Gumdrop Ltd., there may be a way to deal with this problem. The UK-based company has come up with a clever idea that enables easy disposal of gum waste using pink boxes they’ve produced. Passers-by can simply throw any unwanted gum into the pink boxes set up across London. Once full, they are mailed to the factory where the gum is used to create more pink boxes. The company said that gum waste could be changed into other useful things like shoes as well.
Bullus, who founded the company, said she decided to create the clever boxes after observing the mess caused by gum waste on the streets of London. She had spent many months studying how to use gum waste as a material for the clever boxes. After hundreds of failures, she finally succeeded.
To know whether people would like to throw gum waste into the pink boxes, she did two tests. She set up two boxes inside a men’s restroom at Southampton Airport. Bullus said they had to pick up the full boxes just 5 times a year, an effort that cost the company $300. But airport officials would have spent $4,600 over the same period cleaning up the mess left behind by carelessly thrown gum waste. A similar test at London’s famous Villiers Street resulted in a 40% decrease(减少)in gum waste.
Their success has led to the rapid setting-up of the pink boxes across London. Bullus now hopes the pink boxes can help not only London, but also many other places. There are many countries and cities where gum is a problem. The company has also introduced the pink boxes that can be easily carried by people.
1. The introduction to gum in the first paragraph is mainly to show ______.
| A．it’s a kind of unhealthy food |
| B．it’s environmentally unfriendly |
| C．it needs improvement in quality |
| D．it becomes popular all over the world |
2. What do we know about the pink boxes made by Gumdrop Ltd.?
| A．They can break down gum waste |
| B．They can change people’s views on gum |
| C．They are used for recycling gum waste. |
| D．They are made from the same materials as shoes |
3. What may best describe Bullus according to Paragraph 3?
| A．Creative and hardworking. | B．Funny and smart |
| C．Kind and courageous. | D．Careful and trustful |
4. We can learn from the two tests that the pink boxes ______.
| A．lead to a decrease in gum sales |
| B．can be too costly for some airports |
| C．are less helpful in busy places |
| D．reduce the pressure to deal with gum waste |
5. What’s probably Bullus’s future plan?
| A．Applying the pink boxes in more places. |
| B．Encouraging people to avoid buying gum. |
| C．Making it more convenient to carry the pink boxes. |
| D．Improving London’s relationship with other cities. |
