The idea of billions of people going through a few masks a week during this pandemic (疫情) rings alarm bells, but a team of researchers in Melbourne, Australia, may have the solution.
To recycle the abandoned masks, Jie Li and his team added millions of face masks to road-paving (铺路) materials. They found the polypropylene plastic used to make single-use face masks could really increase the flexibility of the road.
The new composite material is a mixture of about 2% masks, with recycled concrete aggregate (RCA)—a material produced from waste concrete and other minerals from buildings pulled down. This recycled material found in the study is ideal for two of the four layers generally required to create roadways. And the final product is more resistant to wear than normal asphalt (沥青), as well as being cheaper too, if there was a method for collecting masks.
Li and his team did a cost-analysis and found that, at $26 per ton, the RCA was about half the cost of mining materials, and as much as a third of the cost of shipping the used masks to a landfill (垃圾填埋场). If the percentage of damaged roads in Washington state were repaired with Li’s mixture, it would reuse nearly 10 billion masks, sparing American landfills hundreds of millions of tons of trash.
The team is going to look for industry partners or governments willing to give their plastic mask road an opportunity for a large-scale test.
8. What’s the purpose of the research?
A.To ring the alarm bells. |
B.To find a substitute for asphalt. |
C.To reduce burden on the environment. |
D.To invent a method for colleting masks. |
9. Which of the following best explains “composite” underlined in Paragraph 3?
A.Combined. | B.Popular. |
C.Powerful. | D.Primitive. |
10. What do we know about the new material?
A.It is money-saving. | B.It has four layers. |
C.It is mainly made of masks. | D.It is expensive to ship. |
11. What will Li’s team probably do next?
A.Do a cost-analysis. | B.Repair the damaged roads. |
C.Look for support. | D.Increase the flexibility of roads. |