Question

In 1993, New York State ordered stores to charge money on beverage (飲料) containers. Within a year, consumers had returned millions of aluminum cans and glass and plastic bottles. Plenty of companies were eager to accept the aluminum and glass as raw material for new products, but because few could figure out what to do with the plastic, much of it wound end up buried in landfills (垃圾填埋場). The problem was not limited to New York. Unfortunately, there were too few uses for second-hand plastic.

Today, one out of five plastic soda bottles is recycled in the United States. The reason for the change is that now there are dozens of companies across the country buying discarded (被丟棄的) plastic soda bottles and turning them into fence post, paint brushes, etc.

As the New York experience shows, recycling involves more than simply separating valuable materials from the rest of the rubbish. A discard remains a discard until somebody figures out how to give it a second life — and until economic arrangements exist to give that second life value. Without enough markets to take in materials collected for recycling, throwaways actually reduce prices for used materials.

Fewer landfill space and rising costs for burying and burning rubbish are forcing local governments to look more closely at recycling. In many areas, the East Coast especially, recycling is already the least expensive waste-management choice. For every ton of waste recycled, a city avoids paying for its disposal (清除，處理), which, in parts of New York, amounts to savings of more than $100 per ton. Recycling also stimulates the local economy by creating jobs and reduces the pollution control and energy costs of industries that make recycled products by giving them a better raw material.

What regulation was issued by New York State concerning beverage containers?

A. A fee should be charged on used containers for recycling.

B. Throwaways should be collected by the state for recycling.

C. Consumers had to pay for beverage containers and could get their money back on returning them.

D. Beverage companies should be responsible for collecting and reusing discarded plastic soda bottles.

The returned plastic bottles in New York used to         .

A.    be turned into raw materials

B.    be separated from other rubbish

C.    have a second-life value

D.    end up somewhere underground

The key problem in dealing with returned plastic beverage containers is         .

A.    how to reduce their recycling costs

B.    to sell them at a profitable price

C.    how to turn them into useful things

D.    to lower the prices for used materials

Recycling has become the first choice for the disposal of rubbish because         .

A.    recycling causes little pollution

B.    other methods are more expensive

C.    recycling has great appeal for the jobless

D.    local governments find it easy to manage

It can be concluded from the passage that         .

A.    recycling is to be suggested both economically and environmentally

B.    local governments in the U. S. can expect big profits from recycling

C.    rubbish is a potential remedy for the shortage of raw materials

D.    landfills will still be widely used for waste disposal

Answer 1

【小題1】C

【小題2】D

【小題3】C

【小題4】B

【小題5】A

解析:

略