After you finish your fries, eat the package. When you add your noodles to boiling water, throw the bag into the pot, too. If these instructions sound confusing to you, it’s only because you haven’t yet heard of Notpla, a London-based start-up company that is designing a seaweed-based replacement for single-use plastic packaging.

The approach feels especially great as the world is coming to terms with the effects of decades of plastic production. According to the UN, 330 million tons of plastic waste is produced globally each year, and out of the 9 billion tons of plastic produced since the early 1950s, about 60% has been buried or thrown away as rubbish. Microplastics — tiny pieces that are often the result of larger plastics breaking down — pollute the ocean, the air and our bodies.

“It’s getting more and more clear how big the plastic problem is,” Notpla design director Karlijn Sibbel said. “Producers are ‘using materials that last for thousands of years for products that are only in use for a few minutes’. We firstly looked to seaweed as the solution to the world’s plastic problem because there is plenty of it, it crows quickly, it doesn’t compete with land crops, and it absorbs carbon from the air,” added Sibbel.

“The exciting thing is that the new product named Ooho is a film that can replace most of the flexible packaging that you see around,” Sibbel said. The potential contents could include coffee grounds, toilet paper or the nails used for making furniture. For foods, such as noodles, they have even experimented with adding more taste to the packaging, so that dissolving the bag could add seasoning to the pot.

Last year, Notpla tested 30,000 takeaway boxes in partnership with the online food ordering service Just Eat. The two companies handed out the takeaway boxes at different UK restaurants and plans are being made to offer the boxes around Europe in 2022. As they expand, Notpla’s team hopes seaweed could replace single-use plastic in the supply chain more broadly, but with a large quantity of plastics used around the world, she understands how difficult such a task is, Sibbel said.

【小题1】How does the author introduce the topic of the passage?

A．By comparing facts.	B．By giving examples.
C．By raising questions.	D．By analyzing data.

【小题2】How much plastic has become rubbish since the early 1950s?

A．About 198 million tons.	B．About 5.4 billion tons.
C．About 330 million tons.	D．About 9 billion tons.

【小题3】What does paragraph 4 mainly talk about?

A．The potential use of the new product.	B．The new application of plastic bags.
C．The motivation for the new study.	D．The next goal of the new research.

【小题4】What does Sibbel think of their task to replace single-use plastic in the supply chain?

A．It is helpless.	B．It is impractical.
C．It is challenging.	D．It is a short-term project.