It was Lefteris Arapakis’s first expedition on a fishing boat, and he didn’t expect what the nets would pull up. There were scorpionfish, red mullet and sea bream. But there was also a bright red can of Coke.
Arapakis, whose family had plied (定期往来) the waters near Athens for five generations, pulled the can out of the net and turned it over to look at the sell-by date stamped on the bottom —1987, seven years older than him. It had been in the Mediterranean for almost three decades.
Every day, the fishing boat — and thousands just like it on the crystalline Mediterranean — caught old bottles, plastic foam, flip-flops and other detritus (碎屑) in its nets. And every day, its crew tossed everything back into the undulating waters, only hauling back what would bring cash.
So Arapakis, now 28, had an idea: he would try to convince the fishing industry to treat plastic as a catch. In 2016, he launched a nonprofit focused on sea cleanup and fishing education called Enaleia, a play on Greek words that calls to mind sustainable fishing. Once the fishers brought the plastic ashore, he would recycle it and pay them for their trouble. Six years into the project, he has signed up more than half of Greece’s large-scale fishing fleet — hundreds of ships — to pull in the plastic they gather as they spy the Mediterranean. He plans to keep expanding globally.
This year, after Arapakis spread his efforts across Greece and much of Italy, he expects to gather nearly 200 tons of plastic — enough to fill a football field five feet high with tiny pieces of plastic. That’s more than 7,500 pounds of plastic every week. And others have taken notice: the United Nations Environment Program named him a Young Champion of the Earth in 2020 — its highest environmental honor for people under 30.
“If we hadn’t taken action, we would have had that plastic floating around the Mediterranean forever,” Arapakis said. At the beginning, convincing fishermen to join was painstaking work, requiring a lot of face time in unfamiliar villages. It wasn’t easy: The industry doesn’t always cotton to environmentalists, since many fishermen think the global plastics activists want to take away their livelihoods.
4. According to the passage, when was Arapakis probably born?
A.1987. | B.1980. | C.1994. | D.1997. |
5. Why did Arapakis want to persuade the fishers to regard plastic as a catch?
A.Because he considered the detritus pollutant. |
B.Because fishers focused only on their own profit instead of sea cleanup. |
C.Because he wanted to launch a nonprofit focused on sea cleanup. |
D.Because he tried to educate the fishers how to deal with plastic. |
6. What can we learn about Arapakis?
A.He made big profits by selling plastic. |
B.He is the youngest person to receive the highest environmental honor. |
C.He has taken timely action to make plastic disappear forever around the Mediterranean. |
D.A lot of fishermen were unwilling to join him at first. |
7. What does this text mainly talk about?
A.A bright red Coke can floating in the Mediterranean. |
B.An effort of a young to dispose the plastic problem in the Mediterranean. |
C.A nonprofit project aimed at sea cleanup in the Mediterranean. |
D.An acute plastic problem emerging in the Mediterranean. |