It might be hard at first glance to see what things like toothbrushes, tires, cigarettes, and shoes have in common. But look closer and you’ll find that, like so many objects in our daily lives, they’re often made to a greater or lesser degree of the magic stuff (东西): plastic.
That stuff is now a planetary problem. Sometimes, because the plastic is mixed with other materials — including other plastics, such as in shoes — it’s difficult or impossible to recycle. In many places, recycling or burying in a landfill isn’t an option, not to mention all the waste that ends up in rivers and oceans. And so, more often than not, after a short useful life, plastic objects enter what’s likely to be a centuries-long afterlife as rubbish.
They’re thrown into rivers and washed into the sea. They break down into tiny bits called micro plastics. Sea animals big and small eat those pieces. Some pieces get mixed in with sea salt and we wind up eating them, with uncertain effects. We breathe in even smaller pieces called nano plastics: Scientists recently discovered them on remote mountaintops and even in the Arctic, where they are carried by winds and mixed with rain and snow.
The magic stuff has now become the stuff of nightmares.
Increasingly the challenge is to have the former without the latter. “Reduce, reuse, and recycle” has been the environmentalists’ answer for half a century. Businesses that sell plastic products or packaging, however, have little motivation to encourage reducing or reusing, and recycling — once thought a cure-all — can be complex and expensive. But with plastic pollution now a global problem, the stakes (风险) are raised, and so is public awareness.
Plastic waste has started to worry us. Business owners are creating new options for avoiding it. The point is not to demonize（妖魔化）things that were invented for good reason and with good intentions; the point is to find a way to have our plastic and not eat it too.
【小题1】Which of the following can best describe plastic in our life according to Paragraph 1?| A．Old-fashioned | B．Widely-used |
| C．Harmful | D．Useless |
| A．It hasn’t worked properly. |
| B．It has been totally ignored. |
| C．It hasn’t gained support from the public. |
| D．It has encouraged the businesses to recycle. |
| A．A ban on plastic production. |
| B．A law punishing plastic littering. |
| C．An alternative material replacing plastic. |
| D．A new method of using without pollution. |
| A．A magazine. | B．A guidebook. |
| C．A novel. | D．A diary. |
