首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. Questions 14-18 Reading Passag
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. Questions 14-18 Reading Passag
admin
2017-04-14
29
问题
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
Questions 14-18
Reading Passage 2 has five paragraphs A-E.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph, A-E, from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i A lack of consistent policy
ii Learning from experience
iii The greatest advantage
iv The role of research
v A unique material
vi An irrational anxiety
vii Avoiding the real challenges
viii A sign of things to come
A Close up, plastic packaging can be a marvellous thing. Those who make a living from it call it a forgotten infrastructure that allows modern urban life to exist. Plastics have helped society defy natural limits such as the seasons, the rotting of food and the distance most of us live from where our food is produced. And yet we do not like it. Partly we do not like waste, but plastic waste, with its hydrocarbon roots and industrial manufacture, is especially galling. In 2008, the UK, for example, produced around two million tonnes of plastic waste, twice as much as in the early 1990s. The very qualities of plastic - its cheapness, its indestructible aura - make it a reproachful symbol of an unsustainable way of life. The facts, however, do not justify our unease. All plastics are, at least theoretically, recyclable. Plastic packaging makes up just 6 to 7 per cent of the contents of British dustbins by weight and less than 3 per cent of landfill. Supermarkets and brands, which are under pressure to reduce the quantity of packaging of all types that they use, are finding good environmental reasons to turn to plastic: it is lighter, so requires less energy for transportation than glass, for example; it requires relatively little energy to produce; and it is often re-usable. An Austrian study found that if plastic packaging were removed from the supply chain, other packaging would have to increase fourfold to make up for it.
B So are we just wrong about plastic packaging? Is it time to stop worrying and learn to love the disposable plastic wrapping around sandwiches? Certainly there are bigger targets for environmental savings such as improving household insulation and energy emissions. Naturally, the plastics industry is keen to point them out. What’s more, concern over plastic packaging has produced a squall of conflicting initiatives from retailers, manufacturers and local authorities. It’s a squall that dies down and then blows harder from one month to the next. Tt is being left to the individual conscience and supermarkets playing the market,’ says Tim Lang, a professor specialising in food policy. ’It’s a mess.’
C Dick Searle of the Packaging Federation points out that societies without sophisticated packaging lose half their food before it reaches consumers and that in the UK, waste in supply chains is about 3 per cent. In India, it is more than 50 per cent. The difference comes later: the British throw out 30 per cent of the food they buy -an environmental cost in terms of emissions equivalent to a fifth of the cars on their roads. Packagers agree that cardboard, metals and glass all have their good points, but there’s nothing quite like plastic. With more than 20 families of polymers to choose from and then sometimes blend, packaging designers and manufacturers have a limitless variety of qualities to play with.
D But if there is one law of plastic that, in environmental terms at least, prevails over all others, it is this: a little goes a long way. This means, first, that plastic is relatively cheap to use - it represents just over one-third of the UK packaging market by value but it wraps more than half the total number of items bought. Second, it means that even though plastic encases about 53 per cent of products bought, it only makes up 20 per cent by weight of the packaging consumed. And in the packaging equation, weight is the main issue because the heavier something is, the more energy you expend moving it around. In view of this, righteous indignation against plastic can look foolish.
E One store commissioned a study to find precise data on which had less environmental impact: selling apples loose or ready-wrapped. Helene Roberts, head of packaging, explains that in fact they found apples in fours on a tray covered by plastic film needed 27 per cent less packaging in transportation than those sold loose. Steve Kelsey, a packaging designer, finds the debate frustrating. He argues that the hunger to do something quickly is diverting effort away from more complicated questions about how you truly alter supply chains. Rather than further reducing the weight of a plastic bottle, more thought should be given to how packaging can be recycled. Helene Roberts explains that their greatest packaging reduction came when the company switched to re-usable plastic crates and stopped consuming 62,000 tonnes of cardboard boxes every year. Plastic packaging is important, and it might provide a way of thinking about broader questions of sustainability. To target plastic on its own is to evade the complexity of the issues. There seems to be a universal eagerness to condemn plastic. Is this due to an inability to make the general changes in society that are really required? ’Plastic as a lightweight food wrapper is now built in as the logical thing,’ Lang says. ’Does that make it an environmentally sound system of packaging? It only makes sense if you have a structure such as exists now. An environmentally driven packaging system would look completely different.’ Dick Searle put the challenge another way. ’The amount of packaging used today is a reflection of modern life.’
Paragraph D
选项
答案
iii
解析
’... there is one law of plastic that... prevails over[= is more important than]all others ...: a little goes a long way ... And in the packaging equation, weight is the main issue ...’
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/1lNO777K
本试题收录于:
雅思阅读题库雅思(IELTS)分类
0
雅思阅读
雅思(IELTS)
相关试题推荐
ARRAY:NUMBERS::
Astheyearswentby,Kingsley’slettersdisplayedhimdecliningintoaconstantofaestheticintolerance;hedisplayed______di
Becausemanyoftheblacklistsinthecommunicationsandentertainmentindustriesweresecret,thenumberofplaywrights,script
Relativismamountstothedenialofanobjectiveworldaboutwhichtrueandfalsestatementscanbemade;thereisnoabs
Sendingarobotintospacetogatherinformationiscertainlyaviableoption,Linebutshouldberegardedonlyasthat--anopt
Sendingarobotintospacetogatherinformationiscertainlyaviableoption,Linebutshouldberegardedonlyasthat--anopt
(Thispassagewaswrittenpriorto1950)Wenowknowthatwhatconstitutespracticallyallofmatterisemptyspa
ThispassageisadaptedfromTheAmericanRepublic:Constitution,Tendencies,andDestinybyO.A.Brownson,1866.Thean
Researchhasproventhatunliketheirsober______whosloweddownaftermakingamistaketotrytocorrecttheiractions,menwho
Governmentofficialsauthorized______becausetheywanttohaveacompleteenumerationofthecountry’spopulation.
随机试题
任意公积金
不当得利之债的债权人得请求债务人返还的利益为()
治血证四法止血、消瘀、宁血、补虚,出于
某项工程项目分解后,根据工作间的逻辑关系绘制的双代号网络计划如下图所示。工程实施到第12天末进行检查时各工作进展如下:A、B、C三项工作已经完成,D与G工作分别已完成5天的工作量,E工作完成了4天的工作量。问题:该网络计划的计划工期为多
某公司进口了一批台湾产摩托车零件,成交价格为CIFHKD150000,其中折扣为10%并经海关审查正常,海关审定该批货物的完税价格为____。
下列不属于个人贷款产品的要素的是()。
一般资料:求助者,女,22岁,大三学生。案例介绍:求助者两个月前和最好的朋友吵架了,吵得很凶,然后两人就不说话了,但是求助者事后又觉得自己错了,可是道歉又觉得没面子,所以就一直没和好朋友道歉。但是过了没多久,发现好朋友身边又多了一个女生,经常和她
设窗体上有1个水平滚动条,已经通过属性窗口把它的Max属性设置为1,Min属性设置为100。下面叙述中正确的是
HostilitytoGypsieshasexistedalmostfromthetimetheyfirstappearedinEuropeinthe14thcentury.TheoriginsoftheGyps
Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteanessaybasedontheproblemsofsharedbicyclesandthecountermeasures.Yo
最新回复
(
0
)