While waste within the convenience economy should certainly be solved, it is neither realistic nor sustainable to work towards the complete abandonment of plastics for packaging and other convenience items. Plastics play a crucial role in preserving products both physically and from the effects of water, oxygen and other things. Further, we cannot over-rely on recycling when we consider weak market interest in low-grade materials.
What we need is a strong focus on improving the sustainability of the plastics that we will continue to need. For these plastics, the clear goal should be to stop the use of oil. We must turn to materials based on natural, renewable resources and produce plastics that have minimal impact on the environment after multiple use. Several of these products are already available on the market, but the key to challenging the dominance of oil-based plastics is extending and developing the capacity and range of such products with new material science.
Industrial biotechnology is becoming a cornerstone of the bio-economy. It involves working with natural processes to extend biochemical pathways that can be used in manufacturing (制造业). It has the potential to improve how we manufacture materials and allow us to produce entirely new materials, at the same time protecting the environment and reducing costs.
At Biome Bio-plastics, for example, our industrial biotechnology development programme has already successfully produced bio-based chemicals at sufficient scale (规模) for industrial testing from lignin, the woody material in plants and other renewable carbon sources. Availability of these chemicals could-completely transform the bio-plastics market, creating natural polymers (聚合物) that can compete with oil-based polymers on both cost and functionality. We believe that our product can deliver important changes across the materials industry and provide a critical tool in the fight against plastic pollution.
【小题1】What does paragraph 1 mainly focus on concerning plastics?| A．Their source materials. | B．Their vital importance. |
| C．The problems they cause. | D．The methods to abandon them |
| A．They should be eco-friendly. | B．They could be a bit expensive. |
| C．They could be replaced by plant products | D．They should be made from used things. |
| A．The high cost of carbon sources. |
| B．The wide variety of their products. |
| C．The low availability of oil-based polymers. |
| D．The application of industrial biotechnology |
| A．A newspaper journalist. | B．A government officer. |
| C．A company manager. | D．A university researcher |
