Green Hills, Clear Water, Blue Sky is a project that was set up
All in all, people and the government should work side by side to take care of the Earth.
A. causes B. enemy C. factories D. kill E. trees F. friend G. spreads |
Pollution is our great
1. What is the relationship between the speakers?
A.A couple. | B.Colleagues. | C.Classmates. |
A.Cans. | B.Paper. | C.Plastic bottles. |
A.Stop using paper cups. |
B.Prepare boxes for different wastes. |
C.Reduce the use of paper, plastic and cans. |
4 . Plastic is low-cost and long-lasting. It is not easily degraded(降解) because natural degradation processes can’t deal with its chemical components(成分). It takes in other ocean-present harmful substances. These chemical and dangerous components are gradually got into the atmosphere with additives such as color, which turns out to be really harmful when the plastic breaks down.
The design and development of new plastic products was sped up after World War II. Life without plastic seemed impossible in the modern age. But even though plastic was quite convenient, the dark side of it was seen as people began to enjoy the throw-away community. Many plastic products, such as plastic bags, have a lifetime of a few minutes to hours. However, they’ll stay in the environment for hundreds of years. We are destroying the very world that nurtured us.
Just 9% of plastic has been recycled and 12% burnt after production rose in the 1950s, which leave s about 79% of the 8.3 billion tons produced sitting in landfills(垃圾填埋场) or damaging our fields, oceans, and waterways. And each year the plastic ends up as contaminants. So to beat plastic pollution, we need to work together.
While plastic burning reduces the amount of waste dumped into oceans and lands, harmful gases are still produced, which also leads to greenhouse gases. However, if we make a firm decision and use modern waste management methods, we will be able to create a safe and healthy world. It is high time that we as responsible global citizens, took on the duty of protecting our environment and made great effort in saving our mother earth, instead of just leaving everything to our government. So, ladies and gentlemen, let’s make a promise to successfully deal with plastic waste and protect our world from all possible risks.
1. What is Paragraph 1 mainly about?A.The harm of plastic. | B.The convenience of plastic. |
C.The protection of plastic. | D.The use of plastic. |
A.Happy. | B.Worried. | C.Excited. | D.Relaxed. |
A.Things that cause pollution. | B.Things that produce plastic. |
C.Things that cost money. | D.Things that help people. |
A.A short story. | B.A speech. | C.A newspaper. | D.A notice. |
5 . Chinese consumers have said they will avoid eating Japanese seafood over safety concerns once Japan starts releasing (排放) nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.
On July 7, the General Administration of Customs released an import (进口) ban on aquatic products from the 10 Japanese cities. It’s indicated that Japan’s plan to release polluted wastewater into the sea was a matter of global concern. The plan caused more Chinese consumers who eat seafood began to worry about their safety, according to the administration.
According to a survey in 2022 by Chinese market consultancy company iiMedia Research, 39.58 percent of participants eat Japanese seafood once every two or three weeks.
“I will not eat seafood imported from Japan anymore,” said a data engineer surnamed Wang in Shanghai. The 42-year-old has been a fan of Japanese food since 2000 and used to eat Japanese food once a month. “If I have other options, I will choose seafood that does not come from the Pacific Ocean,” he added.
Wang Qian, a financial employee in Beijing, said she has been to about 20 Japanese restaurants so far. “Normally, I would not pay attention to where the seafood came from. But now I will try not to choose seafood from Japan,”she said. “Wastewater poses a threat to human health and marine ecology.”
Wang Qian said that Japan should use other methods to solve the problem, rather than releasing nuclear wastewater into the ocean.
An employee of the Japanese restaurant Jiubanwu, in Beijing, who did not want to be named, told China Daily that the restaurant’s fish and shrimp are imported from Russia, France and other countries. “We have not been buying seafood from Japan since April,” she said.
In addition to food safety, some people are worried about using cosmetic (美容的) products made in Japan.
1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?A.Releasing nuclear wastewater has aroused worldwide concern. |
B.All the seafood which is imported from Japan will be banned. |
C.Chinese consumers will be stricter when choosing seafood to eat. |
D.Japan’s plan to release the wastewater is criticized by Japanese. |
A.She won’t eat Japanese seafood anymore. |
B.She will be more cautious of the source of seafood. |
C.She will be devoted to career of human health and marine ecology. |
D.She is sure that Japan will figure out methods to solve the problem. |
A.China’s specific methods to dealing with nuclear wastewater. |
B.The influence of wastewater on Japanese cosmetic products. |
C.A formal call to Japan for producing safer cosmetic products. |
D.The world’s reply to Japanese nuclear wastewater releasing. |
A.Surprised. | B.Doubtful. | C.Unclear. | D.Critical. |
6 . My husband and I always wanted to go to the Caribbean but didn’t know much about the islands or how we were going to afford it. By chance, a friend of ours in Australia mentioned “pet sitting” and that it is something you can do all over the world.
We quickly created an account on a pet sitting website and began searching for options. There were only a couple of sits available in that part of the world, but we tried our luck, sent a request, and to our surprise, landed a three-month job in Grenada, so our year was going to be taken up with Caribbean pet sits.
Inspired by a Canadian couple, we decided to start our own travel blog. We began by writing about The British Virgin Islands, highlighting the beautiful beaches. However, for every photo album of a beautiful beach, there were 10 photos of trash (垃圾). It was hard to ignore the plastic pollution issue, especially on such primitive and remote beaches. So, we began to share photos of the trash we saw and how much we could pick upon our daily dog walks.
The more we looked into plastic pollution, the more we realized the severity of the global plastic pollution. From that point, we used our platform to create awareness and highlight ways to say no to plastic and travel plastic-free. We changed our daily routines, our way of living, and even our diets to accommodate more organic foods and little to no plastic packaging.
It’s been over three years now and we continue to do what we can. This journey has led us to some amazing places, working with great brands and even organizing a country-wide beach clean-up campaign in Grenada.
Our aim now is to keep on going. We love connecting with like-minded people. It’s been amazing few years that was sparked by a conversation about pet sitting. Who would have guessed?
1. Why did the author do pet sitting?A.To cover travel expenses. | B.To raise fund. |
C.To conserve the environment. | D.To shoot beautiful beaches. |
A.Pet sitting is a new sort of occupation. |
B.The Caribbean is a perfect travel destination. |
C.Travel blog is a superb way to gain popularity. |
D.Actions should be taken to fight plastic pollution. |
A.Challenging. | B.Significant. | C.Adventurous. | D.Unbearable. |
A.Shifting Lifestyles by Pet Sitting | B.Address Global Environment Pollution |
C.Unexpected Gains from Pet Sitting Travel | D.The availability of Pet Sitting in the Caribbean |
7 . Naturalist Enzo Suma, who is now 40, lives in Puglia, a region in southern Italy whose long coastline faces the Adriatic Sea. Floating waste accumulates in this relatively enclosed part of the Mediterranean, unlike the open ocean, where the waste tends to be spread over a vast area. Feeling concerned about that, Suma makes it a habit to pick up the washed-up waste along the shore, especially after big winter storms.
One day, Suma was walking along the beach near his home when he discovered a bottle of Coke. Suma noticed on the bottle that the price, clearly printed on the bottom, was in lire, a currency (货币) that hadn’t been used in Italy since it was replaced by the euro in 2002. Could a plastic container have well survived in the Mediterranean, he wondered, for about two decades?
That led him to founding the Archeoplastica museum. It has a collection of about 500 unique pieces recovered from Italian shores and the Coke bottle is the first one of them. All collection demonstrates the unsettling life force of plastic waste in the environment. “Seeing that a product people may have used 30, 40, or 50 years ago remains still unchanged, you’ll feel different. It’s a great shock,” Suma said to a reporter. So Suma often exhibits selected pieces from the Archeoplastica collection at local schools around his hometown of Ostuni.
“The playful side of the work allows you to arrive at the less beautiful side of things,” Suma acknowledged. “Plastic is a kind of useful substance. But it’s unthinkable that a water bottle, made from a material designed to last so long, can be used for just a few days—or even minutes—before becoming garbage. Clean the beaches. Clean the oceans. Recycle. But if we are still throwing out plastics, none of those are going to be long-term solutions.”
1. What’s Suma’s concern about his living place?A.Its long coastline is disappearing. | B.Big storms frequently hit the area. |
C.Floating waste spreads over a vast area. | D.The waste pollution on shore is worsening. |
A.They have a history of more than half a century. |
B.They were quite valuable before turning into waste. |
C.They’re more like educational exhibits than garbage. |
D.They have stronger life force than ordinary plastic products. |
A.Creative, devoted and socially responsible. | B.Enthusiastic, ambitious and adventurous. |
C.Generous, cautious and humorous. | D.Curious, efficient and playful. |
A.The birth of plastics has greatly served humans. |
B.The key to tackling the plastic pollution is to stop littering. |
C.The plastic problem can be solved by cleaning and recycling. |
D.People should be more aware of the powerful functions of plastics. |
8 . Remember boiling tap water for drinking? Who has the time now? Instead, bottled water is everywhere, in offices, airplanes, stores, homes and restaurants. But what’s in that bottle? Beautiful names and labels depicting romantic scenes have convinced us that the liquid is the purest drink around. But given the lack of labeling requirements for bottled water, how much do consumers really know about what’s in the bottle? “The public should not assume that water purchased in a bottle, is better regulated purer, or safer than most tap water. Water utilities are required to tell the public more about the tap water than bottled water companies are,” says Mae Wu, a bottled water (expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a nonprofit organization in the US devoted to protecting health and the environment. Sure, some bottled water comes from sparkling springs and other, sources. But in the US, alone, more than 25 percent of it comes from a municipal (市政的) supply. The water is treated, purified and sold to us, often at a thousand fold increase in price. Most people are surprised to learn that they are drinking glorified tap water, but bottlers aren’t required to list the source on the label.
According to the Asian Bottled Water Association, water from municipal supply does not have to state on its label that it is from a community water system. However, there are some brands like Nestle Pure Life that indicate whether the water comes from public, private or deep well sources. Advertising can be misleading at best and deceptive at worst. In a recent case, a food and drink manufacturer boasted in a TV commercial that its mineral water came from a “high-quality water source” but it turned out that, that was no more than plain tap water.
The potential health risks are important to understand, but bottled water also affects the health of the planet. While we struggle to, cut down on our consumption of fossil fuels, bottled water increases it. Virgin petroleum (石油) is used to make PET, and the more bottles we use, the more virgin petroleum will be needed to create new bottles. Fossil fuels are burned to fill the bottles and distribute them. Some brands of water come from islands and countries thousands of kilometers away, and shipping bottles can cause carbon pollution to spill into the water and spew into the air.
1. Compared to the tap water, bottled water .A.is much better, than the tap water |
B.is better regulated, purer and safer |
C.spends more money on advertisement |
D.is required to list the source on the label |
A.We can never trust the TV commercials. |
B.Advertisements on bottled water always cheat the audiences. |
C.Some companies choose to state where the water comes from. |
D.The government asks the company not to state the source of water. |
A.Through listing, figures. |
B.Through making comparisons. |
C.Through adding background information. |
D.Through cause and effect argumentation. |
A.Indifferent. | B.Negative. | C.Favorable. | D.Ambiguous. |
9 . People often recommend planting trees to make cities greener, cleaner and healthier. But during heat waves, city trees can actually increase air pollution. Indeed, a new study has found, up to 60 percent of the smoggy ozone in a city’s air on hot days may trace to chemicals emitted by trees. Galina Churkina, who works at Humboldt University of Berlin, and her team have confirmed it.
The findings might seem the opposite of what you would expect, notes Robert Young, an expert in city planting at the University of Texas at Austin. Indeed, he says, “Everything has multiple effects.” The new findings do not mean cities should discourage tree planting. Instead, cities may need stricter controls on other sources of pollution, such as tailpipeemissions from cars and trucks.
City trees soak up carbon dioxide, and at the same time they release oxygen into the air. But oxygen is far from the only gas that trees and certain other green plants release into the air. One of these chemicals is a hydrocarbon known as isoprene(异戊二烯). It can react with combustion(燃烧)pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides(氮氧化物)emitted by cars and trucks in cities. The result is the formation of ozone, a component of smog, which can irritate the lungs and cause airway diseases.
Churkina says her team is not surprised to see the seemingly contrary relationship between plants and pollution. She adds that its importance is quite amazing. “The results,” Churkina says, “suggest that city tree planting programs should not ignore the role this greenery may play in aggravating summer air pollution.” “Adding more trees will improve quality of life only if those cities also undertake plans to sharply cut vehicle pollution in summer and to increase their reliance on clean energy sources for electric power,” she says.
1. What does the new study find about city trees on hot days?A.City trees can reduce the smoggy ozone. |
B.City trees may easily absorb heat waves. |
C.City trees may cause more air pollution. |
D.More city trees can make a city far better. |
A.The harm ozone does to people in cities. |
B.The way trees help the formation of ozone. |
C.The chemicals green plants release into the air. |
D.The benefits trees bring to the city environment. |
A.Worsening. | B.Decreasing. | C.Improving. | D.Releasing. |
A.Planting more trees in cities. |
B.Advocating using clean energy. |
C.Improving people’s quality of life. |
D.Banning vehicle pollution in summer. |
10 . We all have an idea about the common types of environmental problems. However, light pollution may be a new term to many of us. But, the fact is that it does affect mankind, other living forms and the environment as a whole.
What is light pollution? It presents all forms of misused man-made light. The obvious cause of light pollution is the use of outdoor lighting products improperly. It can be office lighting, car headlights, station lights, streetlights and many more.
Light pollution is harmful to both animals and plants. Upon studies, it is found that obvious effects are observed in the behaviour of animals that are active at night. Needless to mention, bright light at night makes it difficult for these animals to hunt, wander and perform their regular activities. Light pollution is directly or indirectly responsible for causing several diseases. Its effects are related to disturbance in the physical rhythm (节奏). It contributes to risks of developing cancerous cells. So, it’s nothing less than a threat to human health.
You have already seen the negative effects of light pollution on animals and human health. Apart from this, the actual cost of misused light is about millions of dollars every year. It also leads to the release of greenhouse gases and global warming. After all, coal or gas is used for producing electricity.
While outdoor lighting and using man-made lighting products are part of our modern lifestyle, some simple ways will surely help in reducing light pollution. For example, while installing (安装) outdoor lighting, make sure that they are pointed downwards. Also, use only the required lighting equipment for both home and offices. Believe it or not, many people living in the urban areas cannot view clear sky and stars at night. Let’s contribute our part in reducing the pollution.
1. What can we learn about light pollution?A.It has little effect on plants. |
B.It contributes to most cancers. |
C.It is a negative fruit of light technology. |
D.It affects animals’ behavior during the day. |
A.It increases the temperature at night. |
B.It creates clouds in parts of the Earth. |
C.It stops the release of greenhouse gases. |
D.It is related to the burning of coal and gas. |
A.Forbid the use of outdoor lighting. |
B.Use clean energy to produce electricity. |
C.Avoid unnecessary lights at home and offices. |
D.Reduce money spent on light in urban areas. |
A.Citizens should be banned to install outdoor lighting. |
B.Only simple ways can help reduce light pollution. |
C.There is no clear sky or stars over the urban areas. |
D.Light pollution needs to be dealt with urgently. |