Of course, the reason why there’s so much plastic around is that it’s an amazingly useful material. We can’t get enough of it. It’s durable and adaptable, and is used for everything from yoghurt pots to spaceships. But it’s precisely this quality which makes it a problem. The only way to destroy plastic is to heat or burn it – although this has the side effect of harmful emissions.
So what’s the alternative, other than using less plastic? Oceanographer Dr Erik van Sebille from Utrecht University says we’re facing a “tsunami” of plastic waste, and that the global waste industry needs to “get its act together”.
Professor Richard Thompson, a marine biologist from Plymouth University, says it’s poor design that’s at fault. He says that if products are currently designed “with recyclability in mind”, they could be recyled around 20 times over.
Dr Geyer agrees: “The holy grail of recycling is to keep material in use and in the loop for ever if you can. But it turns out in our study that actually 90% of that material that did get recycled - which I think we calculated was 600 million tonnes - only got recycled once.”
词汇表 staggering 令人震惊的
packaging 包装材料
incinerate 被焚毁的
landfill 垃圾填埋场
biodegrade 生物降解
ecologist 生态学家
food chain 食物链
ingest 咽下(食物)
【Planet Plastic 地球快要变成“塑料星球”】相关文章:
★ Entertainment, amusement, recreation 和 pastime 四个表示“娱乐”的名词
★ Can football make you happy? 足球能使你快乐吗?
★ How late is too late? 多晚算太晚?
★ Antarctica's plastic threat 科学家称塑料污染已威胁南极海域
★ Practical and pragmatic “实用的”两个词的区别
★ Sweet tooth hazards 爱吃甜食给健康带来的隐患
★ 日常英语:电影
★ Call for new Oxbridge colleges for disadvantaged students 专家呼吁牛剑为扩招弱势群体学生新建学院
最新
2019-11-15
2019-11-15
2019-11-15
2019-11-15
2019-11-15
2019-11-15