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  3. Originally, plastic was hailed for its potential to reduce humankind’s heavy environmental footprint. The earliest plastics were

Originally, plastic was hailed for its potential to reduce humankind’s heavy environmental footprint. The earliest plastics were

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问题     Originally, plastic was hailed for its potential to reduce humankind’s heavy environmental footprint. The earliest plastics were invented as substitutes for shrinking supplies of natural materials like ivory or tortoiseshell. Today, plastic is perceived as nature’s nemesis(难以战胜的对手). But a generic distaste for plastic can muddy our thinking about the trade-offs involved when we replace plastic with other materials.
    Take plastic bags, the emblem(象征)for all bad things. They clog storm drains, tangle up recycling equipment, litter parks and beaches and threaten wildlife on land and at sea. Such problems have fueled bans on bags around the world and in more than a dozen American cities. Unfortunately, the bans typically lead to a huge increase in the use of paper bags, which also have environmental drawbacks. In other words, plastics aren’t necessarily bad for the environment; it’s the way we make and use them that’s the problem.
    It’s estimated that half of the nearly 600 billion pounds of plastics produced each year go into single-use products. Some are indisputably valuable, like disposable syringes(注射器), which have been a great ally in preventing the spread of infectious diseases like HIV, and even plastic water bottles, which, after disasters like the Japanese tsunami(海啸), are critical to saving lives. Yet many disposables, like the bags, drinking straws and packaging commonly found in beach clean-ups, are essentially prefab litter with a heavy environmental cost.
    And there’s another cost. Pouring so much plastic into disposable conveniences has helped to diminish our view of a family of materials we once held in high esteem. Plastic has become synonymous with cheap and worthless, when in fact those chains of hydrocarbons(碳氢化合物)ought to be regarded as among the most valuable substances on the planet. If we understood plastic’s true worth, we would stop wasting it on trivial throwaways and take better advantage of what this versatile material can do for us.
    In a world of nearly seven billion souls and counting, we are not going to feed, clothe and house ourselves solely from wood, ore and stone; we need plastics. And in an era when we’re concerned about our carbon footprint, we can appreciate that lightweight plastics take less energy to produce and transport than many other materials.
    Yet we can’t hope to achieve plastic’s promise for the 21st century if we stick with wasteful 20th-century habits of plastic production and consumption. We have the technology to make better and safer plastics—forged from renewable sources, rather than finite fossil fuels, using chemicals that inflict minimal or no harm on the planet and our health.
What do we know about the single-use products from the third paragraph?
选项 A、Plastic bags account for only a small part of them.
B、They are all indispensable in emergencies or disasters.
C、Masses of them usually end up as litter.
D、Most of them are made good use of by people.
答案C
解析 事实细节题。由定位段首句和末句可知，每年所生产的近6 000亿磅的塑料中，有一半被用于一次性产品。许多一次性产品，如在清扫海滩时常看到的塑料袋、吸管和包装袋，其本质上是预制垃圾，对环境影响巨大。由此得出C)为正确答案。A)“塑料袋只占其中的一小部分”，原文没有明确提及，故排除；B)“它们在紧急事件或灾难中都是不可缺少的”，定位句提到有些塑料产品很有价值，如一次性注射器，它为阻止像艾滋病这样的传染病的蔓延起到了重要作用；甚至是塑料装水瓶，在日本海啸这样的大灾难之后，都成了至关重要的救命物品。但并不能因此说明一次性产品都有这样的作用，故排除；D)“大多数一次性产品都被人们很好地加以利用”，第三段末句提到，许多一次性塑料产品最终沦为垃圾，选项与原文意思相反，故排除。
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