1 . Every order of takeout comes with a side of single-use plastics and each plastic fork. knife, spoon and straw-whether or not you wanted it or used it-ends up in the trash.
New research found that 139 million metric tons of single-use plastic waste was generated in 2021-six million metric tons more single-use plastics compared to 2019. A hunger for takeout meals during the pandemic contributed to the surge.
An estimated 60% of Americans order takeout or delivery at least once a week and online ordering is growing 300% faster than in-house dining; that means millions of single-use plastic utensils (餐具) are going out with every order.
New laws aim to address the problem. Some of the recent bills are thanks to The National Reuse Network, part of the environmental nonprofit Upstream, which launched a national Skip the Stuff campaign to work out policies that require restaurants to include single-use plastic utensils, straws, and napkins only when customers request them.
The bills also require meal delivery and online apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub and Door Dash to add single-use extras to their menus; customers can choose the items and quantities to have them included in the order. Customers that don’t order the single-use plastics won’t receive them. The goal of the bills is to reduce the 40 billion plastic utensils sent to the landfill (垃圾填埋场) every year.
“Most of the time, people are taking food home or to their offices where there are reusable utensils so these utensils wind up in a drawer or get thrown out,” says Alexis Goldsmith, national organizing director for a nationwide project Beyond Plastics. “Some people do need utensils, but for the most part, they’re not needed.”
To date, Skip the Stuff bills have been passed in several cities, including Denver, Washington, D.C. and Chicago, California and Washington state passed statewide bills that make single-use plastic “accessories” available with takeout orders only upon request.
Organizations like Upstream, Beyond plastics and NRDC have created toolkits to help additional communities launch their own Skip the Stuff campaigns.
1. What does the underlined word “surge” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Great desire. | B．Sharp decline. | C．Rapid increase. | D．Obvious panic. |
| A．Choosing green products. | B．Adding single-use napkins. |
| C．Recycling and reusing utensils. | D．Providing utensils only on request. |
| A．To reduce plastic waste. | B．To stop bad eating habits. |
| C．To encourage people to eat out. | D．To better the dining environment. |
| A．Unimportant. | B．Damaging. | C．Much-needed. | D．Well-known. |
2 . While it’s true that introverts tend to enjoy alone time, it’s not true they dislike people or social environments. Just because you show more reservation than enthusiasm in these settings, it doesn’t mean you need to change or that you can’t make new friends. Kat Vellos, a speaker and connection coach, advises introverts to “Resist pressure from the outside world and don’t hide your true nature or force yourself to be extroverted.”
Danielle Bayard Jackson, a friendship coach, says that introverts can be good friends. “I think we sometimes joke about them being incapable or not knowing what to do…and they actually have a lot of superpowers that we don’t give credit(赞扬)to. They’re very observant. They’re really good listeners. And I think that makes for really good friends.” So, how can introverts use their strengths and make new friends in the process?
“One of my favorite ways to do this is by going to a social event, then camping out on the edge with other highly sensitive people who don’t want to be in the center of the action.” Vellos, who is an introvert herself, says. “The kitchen and the edge of the yard are where I’ve often found the best conversations and feelings of connection at an otherwise overwhelming(令人难以应对的)party.”
The key for introverts is to be mindful of how they spend their energy so that when they spend it, they spend it well. “If you know you have a small social battery and you can show up for one hour after which it’ll be overwhelming for you, make good use of that information about yourself.” Jackson says. “If you know you only have an hour to spend, choose carefully the things that you say yes to.”
As an introvert, you feel and think deeply, so this means that you have the rare(罕见的)ability to go deeper more quickly with someone new. An hour or two nay be just the amount of time you need.
1. What is Vellos’ suggestion for introverts?| A．Change yourself to make personal relationships better. | B．Make friends with more extroverts. |
| C．Organize various social events. | D．Accept who you really are. |
| A．They prefer to enjoy alone time. |
| B．They are incapable of making new friends. |
| C．They have many advantages that are often ignored. |
| D．They are more popular than extroverts in the workplace. |
| A．Stay with other introverts in less crowded places. |
| B．Invite other introverts to go camping with her. |
| C．Have conversations with sociable guests. |
| D．Give a hand in the kitchen. |
| A．Why we need introverted friends |
| B．How to make friends as an introvert |
| C．Ways of getting along with introverts |
| D．Differences between introverts and extroverts |
3 . When a group of college students put their sorrows into action, they never imagined the project would fuel a nationwide movement to help deal with-hunger and control on food waste.
But that’s exactly what the Farmlink Project has done since 2020, bringing together hundreds of young volunteers to rescue nearly 77 million pounds of excess food and deliver it to those in need. The organization’s efforts help farmers, the environment, and people struggling to feed their families all at once.
“In the United States, 40 million Americans don’t have enough food to eat. They don’t know where their next meal is going to come from,” said Aidan Reilly, who co-founded Farmlink. “Meanwhile, in the United States, were throwing out over 100 billion pounds of food every year.”
Back in 2020, Reilly and his childhood fiend James Kanoff were reading and watching news about food shortages, and they learned that area farms were forced to destroy excess produce that they couldn’t sell, especially with restaurants, schools and hotels closed. Reilly, Kanoff and a core group of friends worked together over Zoom, texted and e-mailed to contact farms coast to coast “We didn’t really set out to start a nonprofit,” Reilly said. “We just thought, there’re so many people suffering if we can figure out one way to help, then that’ll be great.”
In California, they found a farmer who had 13, 000 eggs that could be donated, and Reilly offered to do the pickup and delivery himself. That was the first of many more deliveries. With “well come to you” as their catchphrase(标语), the group rented U-Haul trucks and attempted to do all the food pickup and deliveries themselves.
“We had a lot of small problems in the beginning,” Reilly said. ”We broke axles (车轴), loaded in 40. 000 pounds of potatoes in a wrong way and had to try to drag them out by using another truck and a rope. But we made it work.
“Farmlink has worked with more than 100 farms and 300 communities in the US, rescuing and moving enough food to distribute more than 64 million meals,” Reilly said.
1. What can we learn about Farmlink Project from the text?| A．It was launched by some college students. | B．It helps relieve American poverty. |
| C．It cooperated with the farms worldwide. | D．It is supported by the government |
| A．The produce was of poor quality. |
| B．Nobody came to purchase the produce. |
| C．The farmers refused to sell it at a low price. |
| D．Food shortages were not a problem globally. |
| A．They were lacking in experience. | B．They overloaded the supply. |
| C．Their truck aids didn’t work. | D．The vehicles were inadequate. |
| A．Americans faced a food shortage crisis. |
| B．Farmers in poor areas worried about food waste. |
| C．Volunteers delivered farm produce to those in need. |
| D．Students took action to tackle hunger and food waste. |
In recent years, reports of dogs biting people
The authorities in Xiamen, East China’s Fujian Province, announced on Tuesday the launch of a rectification (矫正) campaign against
Chinese authorities have been
keeping dogs in a civilized manner is a slogan that everybody knows. The important thing is
5 . Casting blame is natural: it is tempting to fault someone else for a mistake rather than taking responsibility yourself. But blame is also harmful. It makes it less likely that people will own up to mistakes, and thus less likely that organizations can learn from them. Research published in 2015 suggests that firms whose managers pointed to external factors to explain their failings underperformed companies that blamed themselves.
Blame culture can spread like a virus. Just as children fear mom and dad’s punishment if they admit to wrongdoing, in a blaming environment, employees are afraid of criticism and punishment if they acknowledge making a mistake at work. Blame culture asks, “who dropped the ball?” instead of “where did our systems and processes fail?” The focus is on the individuals, not the processes. It’s much easier to point fingers at a person or department instead of doing the harder, but the more beneficial, exercise of fixing the root cause, in which case the problem does not happen again.
The No Blame Culture was introduced to make sure errors and deficiencies (缺陷) were highlighted by employees as early as possible. It originated in organizations where tiny errors can have catastrophic (灾难性的) consequences. These are known as high reliability organizations (HROs) and include hospitals, submarines and airlines. Because errors can be so disastrous in these organizations, it’s dangerous to operate in an environment where employees don’t feel able to report errors that have been made or raise concerns about that deficiencies may turn into future errors. The No Blame Culture maximizes accountability because all contributions to the event occurring are identified and reviewed for possible change and improvement.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which supervises air traffic across the United States, makes it clear that its role is not to assign blame or liability but to find out what went wrong and to issue recommendations to avoid a repeat. The proud record of the airline industry in reducing accidents partly reflects no-blame processes for investigating crashes and close calls. The motive to learn from errors also exist when the risks are lower. That is why software engineers and developers routinely investigate what went wrong if a website crashes or a server goes down.
There is an obvious worry about embracing blamelessness. What if the website keeps crashing and the same person is at fault? Sometimes, after all, blame is deserved. The idea of the “just culture”, a framework developed in the 1990s by James Reason, a psychologist, addresses the concern that the incompetent and the malevolent (恶意的) will be let off the hook. The line that Britain’s aviation regulator draws between honest errors and the other sort is a good starting-point. It promises a culture in which people “are not punished for actions or decisions taken by them that match with their experience and training”. That narrows room for blame but does not remove it entirely.
1. According to the research published in 2015, companies that ______ had better performance.| A．blamed external factors | B．admitted their mistakes |
| C．conducted investigations | D．punished the under performers |
| A．It encourages the early disclosure of errors. |
| B．It only exists in high reliability organizations. |
| C．It enables people to shift the blame onto others. |
| D．It prevents organizations from making any error. |
| A．Innocent people might take the blame by admitting their failure. |
| B．Being blamed for mistakes can destroy trust in employees. |
| C．The line between honest errors and the other sort is not clear. |
| D．People won’t learn their lessons if they aren’t blamed for failures. |
| A．Why We Fail to Learn from Our Own Mistakes |
| B．How to Avoid Disastrous Errors in Organizations |
| C．Why We Should Stop the Blame Game at Work |
| D．How to Deal with Workplace Blame Culture |
6 . The curb cut (路缘坡). It’s a convenience that most of us rarely, if ever, notice. Yet, without it, daily life might be a lot harder—in more ways than one. Pushing a baby stroller onto the curb, skateboarding onto a sidewalk or taking a full grocery cart from the sidewalk to your car—all these tasks are easier because of the curb cut.
But it was created with a different purpose in mind.
It’s hard to imagine today, but back in the 1970s, most sidewalks in the United States ended with a sharp drop-off. That was a big deal for people in wheelchairs because there were no ramps to help them move along city blocks without assistance. According to one disability rights leader, a six-inch curb “might as well have been Mount Everest”. So, activists from Berkeley, California, who also needed wheelchairs, organized a campaign to create tiny ramps at intersections to help people dependent on wheels move up and down curbs independently.
I think about the “curb cut effect” a lot when working on issues around health equity (公平). The first time I even heard about the curb cut was in a 2017 Stanford Social Innovation Review piece by Policy Link CEO Angela Blackwell. Blackwell rightly noted that many people see equity as “a zero-sum game (零和游戏)” and that it is commonly believed that there is a “prejudiced societal suspicion that intentionally supporting one group hurts another.” What the curb cut effect shows though, Blackwell said, is that “when society creates the circumstances that allow those who have been left behind to participate and contribute fully, everyone wins.”
There are multiple examples of this principle at work. For example, investing in policies that create more living-wage jobs or increase the availability of affordable housing certainly benefits people in communities that have limited options. But, the action also empowers those people with opportunities for better health and the means to become contributing members of society—and that benefits everyone. Even the football huddle (密商) was initially created to help deaf football players at Gallaudet College keep their game plans secret from opponents who could have read their sign language. Today, it’s used by every team to prevent the opponent from learning about game-winning strategies.
So, next time you cross the street, or roll your suitcase through a crosswalk or ride your bike directly onto a sidewalk—think about how much the curb cut, that change in design that broke down walls of exclusion for one group of people at a disadvantage, has helped not just that group, but all of us.
1. What does the underlined quote from the disability rights leader imply concerning a six-inch curb?| A．It is an unforgettable symbol. | B．It is an impassable barrier. |
| C．It is an important sign. | D．It is an impressive landmark. |
| A．It’s not worthwhile to promote health equity. |
| B．It’s necessary to go all out to help the disabled. |
| C．It’s impossible to have everyone treated equally. |
| D．It’s fair to give the disadvantaged more help than others. |
| A．Spaceflight designs are applied to life on earth. |
| B．Four great inventions of China spread to the west. |
| C．Christopher Columbus discovered the new world. |
| D．Classic literature got translated into many languages. |
| A．Caring for disadvantaged groups may finally benefit all. |
| B．Action empowers those with opportunities for better solutions. |
| C．Society should create circumstances that get everyone involved. |
| D．Everyday items are originally invented for people in need of help. |
7 . People on a college campus were more likely to give money to the March of Dimes if they were asked for a donation by a disabled woman in a wheelchair than if asked by a nondisabled woman. In another
In some situations, those who are physically attractive are more likely to receive aid.
The degree of
Whether a person receives help depends in part on the “worth” of the case. For example, shoppers in a supermarket were more likely to give someone
| A．way | B．study | C．word | D．college |
| A．face | B．arm | C．hand | D．back |
| A．refuse | B．beg | C．receive | D．lose |
| A．challenging | B．recording | C．publishing | D．understanding |
| A．important | B．possible | C．amusing | D．missing |
| A．seek | B．obtain | C．deserve | D．accept |
| A．At first | B．For example | C．In addition | D．Above all |
| A．mailed | B．printed | C．rewritten | D．signed |
| A．talented | B．hard-working | C．helpful | D．good-looking |
| A．throw away | B．send in | C．fill out | D．turn down |
| A．cooperation | B．friendship | C．similarity | D．contact |
| A．plain | B．expensive | C．cheap | D．strange |
| A．money | B．instructions | C．time | D．chances |
| A．shoppers | B．health | C．children | D．research |
| A．talkative | B．handsome | C．sick | D．calm |
When people
The endless choice gives birth to
10 . We all may know someone we consider to be a picky eater, who tends to dislike some common food regularly and causes social embarrassment when ordering at restaurants. But for some people picky eating can actually become a serious disorder, and clinical definitions of picky eating behaviors often include people who only consume around 20 different kinds of foods for a long period of time.
“Having restricted diets can lead to nutritional deficiencies (缺陷) as well as health problems like heart disease, poor bone health and dental issues,” explained Lorenzo Stafford, one of the authors on the latest study. “There is also a social cost because normally enjoyable moments between family members can easily turn into stressful, anxious, and conflict-causing situations when picky eaters feel ashamed or pressured to eat certain food.”
A new research homed in on the effect of plate color on food desirability for picky eaters. The experiment was based on a foundational study from 2018 which looked at the way different colored food bowls affected a person’s sense of taste.
Using a design similar to the 2018 research, the new experiments had participants rate the sweetness, saltiness and overall desirability of a snack food eaten from different colored bowls. In this instance the snack was salt and vinegar potato crisps consumed from either a red, blue or white bowl. Around 50 participants were recruited (招募) and classified as either picky or non-picky eaters based on a standard questionnaire.
The results revealed picky eaters considered the snack to be saltier when it was eaten from a red or blue bowl compared to the white bowl. And overall, picky eaters found the snack generally less desirable when eaten from a red bowl.
It is worth mentioning that a recent survey estimated nearly one in five American adults could be clinically classified as picky eaters. So exploring ways to help these people better engage with more types of food could result in valuable health outcomes.
1. Which of the following may be a picky eater?| A．Tom who ate only some bread this morning. | B．Lisa who only has vegetables for losing weight. |
| C．Peter who often orders little at restaurants. | D．Alex who likes only a small range of dishes. |
| A．Health problems caused by picky eating. |
| B．Moments that are ruined by picky eaters. |
| C．Potential consequences of picky eating. |
| D．Quotes of Lorenzo to support the research findings. |
| A．Bowls of different colors directly affect appetite of eaters. |
| B．Blue color bowls can make the food in them saltier for eaters. |
| C．Food in red bowls seems less attractive to picky eaters. |
| D．The color of the bowl can change the taste of the dishes. |
| A．To show ways of enhancing people’s appetite effectively. |
| B．To stress the importance of reducing picky eaters’ anxiety and stress. |
| C．To encourage us to raise picky eaters’ awareness of healthy eating. |
| D．To call on researchers to help picky eaters try a wider variety of foods. |
