Rubbish or trash is a major kind of environmental pollution. Each person produces about two kilograms of rubbish a day. We are making waste products faster than nature can break them down (分解) .
This adds up to trouble for the environment. Where does all trash go? What can be done to help deal with the rubbish? How can we make less rubbish?
Rubbish isn’t just the smelly rotting (腐烂的) fruits, vegetables or meat that we throw away in our homes. Those are only a small part of all the trash we throw away. We create other more kinds of waste, in construction, in mining (采矿) and in our factories. Did you ever wonder what happened to your rubbish? Most are burned or buried in landfills (废物填埋场). Less than a quarter of our waste is recycled (回收) .
With a population of 1.41 billion, rubbish is a big problem for China. Chinese cities create around 148 million tons of garbage every year. The number is growing at around 10 percent each year. Once, we used about 3 billion plastic shopping bags every day in China. The result was a great waste of resources and serious pollution. So we did something about that. Now we use more cloth bags and shopping baskets when we shop.
In the coming years, China will build waste-to-energy plants in cities to clean up the rubbish and change them to energy. But there’s a lot more that needs to be done. And everyone can play a part.
【小题1】Which of the following probably produce the most garbage?| A．Homes. | B．Factories. | C．Schools. |
| A．工厂 | B．植物 | C．种植 |
| A．Let’s make the Earth a cleaner place |
| B．How to deal with rubbish in daily life |
| C．Problems in big cities. |
| A．An English scientist. | B．A Chinese reporter | C．A UN governor. |
