問題詳情
II、Comprehension:By 2000, half the recoverable material in Britain’sdustbins will be recycled – that, at least, was the targetset last November by Chris Patten, Secretary of Statefor the Environment. But he gave no clues as to howwe should go about achieving it. While recyclingenthusiasts debate the relative merits of differentcollection systems, it will largely be new technology,and the opening up of new markets, that makesPatten’s target attainable: a recycling scheme issuccessful only if manufacturers use the recoveredmaterials in new products that people want to buy.About half, by weight, of the contents of thetypical British dustbin is made up of combustiblematerials. These materials comprise 33 per cent paper,7 per cent plastics (a growing proportion), 4 per cent-2-textiles and 8 per cent miscellaneous combustibles.Of the rest, hard non-combustibles (metals andglass) each make up another 10 per cent, and‘putrescibles’, such as potato peelings and cabbagestalks, account for 20 per cent, although thisproportion is decreasing as people eat morepre-prepared foods. The final fraction is ‘fines’ –nameless dust. This mixture is useless to industry, andin Britain most of it is disposed of in landfill sites –suitable holes, such as worked-out quarries, in whichthe waste is buried under layers of soil and clay. Thatstill leaves about 40 per cent of the mixture – glasscontainers, plastics, and some paper and metalcontainers – as relatively clean when discarded. Thisclean element is the main target for Britain’s recyclers.The first question, then, is how best to separatethe clean element from the rest. The method ofcollection is important because manufacturers will notreuse collected material unless it is clean and availablein sufficient quantities. A bewildering assortment ofdifferent collection schemes operates in the rest ofEurope, and pilot schemes are now under way in manyBritish cities including Leeds, Milton Keynes, Sheffieldand Cardiff. Sheffield, Cardiff and Dundee are testingout alternatives as part of a government-monitoredrecycling project initiated last year by Friends of theEarth.A realistic target for recycling mixed refuse issomewhere between 15 and 25 per cent by weight,according to researchers at the Department of Tradeand Industry’s Warren Spring Laboratory. Thisproportion would include metals and perhaps someglass. Statistics compiled by researchers at theUniversity of East Anglia show that we could almosthalve the total weight of domestic waste going tolandfill by a combination of ‘collect’ schemes (such asdoorstep collections for newspapers), ‘bring’ schemes(such as bottle banks) and plants for extracting metals.
【題組】28. In paragraph 1, the writer suggests that theSecretary of State for the Environment has:
(A) created an impossible target.
(B) provided a target without a method.
(C)given clear details of how to achieve a target.
(D)given manufacturers a target to aim for.
參考答案
答案：B
難度：適中0.428571
統計：A(0),B(3),C(3),D(1),E(0)