 |
| Google Images |
It’s been quite a while now
since a tricky issue (and the funny answer I gave) has been nagging me, for I understood
that – like many of my fellow citizens – I somehow take for granted that which
really destroys our environment. The question went like this, ‘What modern
invention couldn’t you live without?’ I readily said ‘glasses’ (as is evident
from the picture which shows me), but then there was a further clarification,
and I said, ‘I don’t think I could live without plastic bags.’
Am I the only one?
Waste Not, Want Not
[adapted from Focus on First
Certificate, by Sue O’Connell]
Read through the text quickly, ignoring the
gaps for the moment, and decide what it’s about. Choose the best description
from the list below.
A How to save money when you go
shopping
 |
| Google Images |
C
The problem about the rubbish we create
D The problem about the food we eat
‘Waste not, want not,’ my great-aunt used to say to me
as she carefully snipped the string from parcels and folded brown paper away
for re-use. If she received anything wrapped in fancy paper, she kept if for
next year’s presents.
Such economy seems strange in our throwaway society,
where disposable means convenient, and cupboards are filled with boxes and
packets and cartons.
(1)_The idea of a ‘gift pack’, where the gift wrapping is as important as the gift itself, would have been regarded as a cheat 30 years ago. Today it is acceptable for even a packet of biscuits to be enclosed in three layers of wrapping.
(2)_It costs Britain £720 million a year to dispose of its rubbish (70 per
cent of which is packaging). The average family uses up six trees’ worth of
paper a year and, if all the cans used in Britain in one year were placed end
to end, they would reach to the moon and back twice!
Just how much rubbish does go into our bins? (3)_As a young professional couple working long hours,
most of our shopping consists of convenience foods. We had expected to have a
lot of rubbish, but even I was shocked to find that our final waste bag was 1
metre high and weighed over 6 kilos!
 |
| Google Images |
(5)_According to Pippa Hyam of Friends of the Earth, our paper and the metal in our cans are valuable materials which could
easily have been reprocessed and re-used. She was more worried about our use
of plastic, which is difficult to dispose of and may last for hundreds of
years. She would like to see people using less plastic. (6)_Making plastic uses oil, which is running out. It should not be thought
of as a cheap disposable product,’ she says.
Six sentences have been removed from the text.
Choose a sentence from the list (A-F) below to fill each of the gaps. Write the
correct letter in the space. The first one has been done for you as an example.
1. B
A I’m prepared to pay a little more for things that
aren’t packaged in plastic.
B Nowadays, packaging is not only used to
protect goods but also as a positive selling feature.
C Our bin was bulging with paper.
D My husband and I offered
to analyse the contents of our weekly household waste.
E Is this really what we
eat?’
F But we pay a high price
for our sophisticated packaging.
 |
| Google Images |
Find words or phrases in
the text which mean the same as the following. The paragraph numbers are given
in brackets.
1.
cut with
scissors (1)
2.
not plain or
ordinary, with a lot of decoration (1)
3.
saving of
money (2)
4.
intended to
be thrown away (2)
5.
a dishonest
trick (3)
6.
get rid of
(4)
7.
advertising
material sent through the post (6)
8. collection of various things (7)
The garbage island sited on the Pacific Ocean is a great and growing problem.
ReplyDeleteGovernments should do anything to solve it, cleaning it and avoiding that the same thing would occur another time.
We must avoid using so much plastic and recycle it correctly.
All right, Governments should really do something, and do it quickly, before it's too late; but do they?
DeleteWhere should the money come from?
Who does care for the damage done?
Is there a way to substitute the magic plastic bag?
Have you ever seen what disposable plastic bags become in two weeks' time?
I've been "contaminated" in my perception of aseptic packaging!
I think they don´t do anything to solve this type of problems or they don´t do enough. The government is more worried about other things and this is a big mistake because we need a clean environment, a not contaminated planet to live. The money could come from our taxes, becauses we pay taxes for rubbish and other things and I don´t know where the money goes...maybe the taxes and the cuts go only to help banks...
DeleteOnly a few people care for the damage done, and unfortunately these people can´t do a lot, reycle? don´t use plastic bags? It´s not enough, we need help from the goverment.
Carrefour has a possible solution to substitute the plastic bag: bags made with potato, this is not contaminated and cheap, I support it. What do you think? Do you know another solution to substitute the plastic bag?
Now that you mention bags made of potato, it couldn't be such a bad idea; but new technology must be implemented in order to make the product affordable for business developments. But if they are the silky type which comes to pieces in ten days, I'm afraid we're back to the starting point.
DeleteIt looks like there is no way out: you grow cattle on a large scale to increase production; you deliver more meat than people consume; you stock the meat in huge refrigerators; you invent the microwave oven to defrost what has been frozen...and back to where it all started. Whatever we look at has been invented to counteract a previous invention.
Solutions? Perhaps consume in order to live?
Amazing the story of the garbage island! Nevertheless, this is the end result of a chain of events. I work for a maintenance company that works for many councils all over Spain. My job is to clean the streets, but sometimes I am with the dustmen in a rubbish collector, and I spend long periods of time working at the recycling centre. Let’s say that I work in the rubbish and recycling business in which things are not under our control at all.
DeleteFirst of all, as everybody knows, people don’t separate their rubbish. The organic container is a hotchpotch in which people put anything inside or beside. All the litter that covers any street of any town all over Spain is cleared by street cleaners and put into the organic containers as well. Secondly, the big amount of rubbish people leave beside the containers, including furniture, debris, household equipment and many other things is not recycled. It is just collected and taken to the dumping sites together with the organic rubbish. This is a service provided by the councils for free, and people use it to avoid going to the recycling centre. That is how councils promote recycling. It is a complete farce. Finally, the recycling centres are far from being the solution to the problem. Only a few people go, and only valuable materials, like iron or paper, are really recycled because the company can sell them. Mattresses, for example, are not easy to recycle, and therefore is very expensive. They are just buried together with the organic rubbish. Apart from that some materials like polystyrene or nappies or tyres are not allowed.
We need new ideas. Now the plastic bags are not free. This is helping a lot to reduce the number. You know, free things often became valueless. “Cash converters” stores are the best way to reuse. You get rid of something and get some money at the same time. If you want to buy something everything is very cheap. Information campaigns can help as well.
Now I have my doubts about having given a proper name to the post; perhaps INDUSTRIAL DISEASE would have been more appropriate!
DeleteNot that we don't mind, theoretically, about spending money on goods. It's just that the general idea of using and disposing of them rather than trying to recycle and save what can be saved has, in my view, become part of the philosophy of consumerism. We suffer from industrialization, and I wonder for how long!
My 200-euro MP3 needs a new battery. I've been trying to have one fitted in but there's no such thing as after-sales service. Of course I say to myself that I can afford to buy another MP3 (which will be another, cheaper brand), but this is not the problem: such an expensive MP3 should have lasted years, so, in actual fact, I paid the double for it. And this goes for most of the usable products that are supposed to make our lives easier, or more pleasant.