Bicycleriding has taken the world by storm. Bicycles are typically made of steel-组卷网

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Bicycle riding has taken the world by storm. Bicycles are typically made of steel or aluminum but now there is a unique company that is growing bikes on trees, literally. These bicycles are made of British-grown ash trees by Welsh maker Andy Dix. His Hay-on-Wye company, Twmpa Frames, is making bikes that are of high performance and environmentally sustainable.

“It’s great to push for more bikes and fewer cars on the road, but there’s no escaping the fact that the bike industry as a whole is pretty energy intensive, ” Dix told Cycling Industry, “I’ve always tried to minimize environmental impact in my work. Rather than relying on heavily-processed metals, or layers of plastic that will one day end up in landfill, I’m building bikes from captured carbon, in a process powered by sunlight. ”

It took two years to build the prototype (雏形) that was made from ash wood. Dix tested the wooden bike on the roughest roads he could find and discovered that it was comfortable, durable, and excellent at absorbing shakes. He put more than 3, 000 miles on the bike. Dix explained, “I was running along battered roads that would have shaken me to bits on a aluminum bike. The penny dropped: Not only could I make a bike out of wood, but it had inherent advantages over other materials. ”

Though cutting down trees can add to more carbon in the atmosphere, sustainable tree farming is possible. Dix said that manufacturing a British tonne of aluminum results in carbon emissions of 4, 532 kg while producing a tonne of wood only emits 457 kg. Currently, the cost of a new Twmpa Cycle is out of reach for many bicycle riders; but the idea of using sustainable materials like ash trees could start a new cycling revolution that puts the environment first. Helping the environment could be just a pedal away.

【小题1】What’s Paragraph 2 mainly about?

A．The driving force for wooden bikes.

B．The reasons for choosing the materials for building bikes.

C．The problems with cycling industry.

D．The process of building wooden bikes.

【小题2】What does the underlined part “The penny dropped” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Money was missing.

B．The truth came out.

C．The bike broke down.

D．The efforts were in vain.

【小题3】What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A．Logging trees is a wrong practice.