36 UNIT 05 | Wild world 0 Plastic is used for containers because A everyone carries them around. B the material doesn’t cost much. C it lasts at least one year. D there’s no other choice. 1 A problem in our society is A our airplanes are made of plastic. B there’s too much plastic in hospitals. C we throw things away unnecessarily. D we don’t have sufficient plastic. 2 Jambeck warns that by 2060 A there could be three times the amount of plastic waste. B the problem will be the most serious one in the world. C we will feel overwhelmed by plastic. D we will need more environment workers. Read the text about plastic pollution, then choose the correct answer (A, B, C or D) for questions 1–6. Put a cross ( ) in the correct box. The first one (0) has been done for you. READING 7 The oceans are drowning in plastic Do you regularly drink from single-use plastic bottles? Every year around 600 billion are used worldwide, that’s more than a million every minute. There’s no question that plastic bottles are convenient and cheap, but too many of them end up in the sea. Plastic is used in everything from medical equipment to parts of airplanes. However, we have developed a ‘disposable’ lifestyle, which means that we are too quick to get rid of things, thereby creating environmental problems. We are now producing more than 400 million tons of plastic every year. More than three quarters of this production becomes plastic waste in very short order. Packaging is the largest part of this, accounting for just over 40% of total plastic usage. “We’re being overwhelmed by our waste,” says Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer. According to Jambeck’s research, the amount of plastic waste will triple by 2060 unless something is done worldwide to stop it. Do you buy your water and soft drinks in plastic bottles? The process of producing bottled water requires around 6 times as much water per bottle as there is in the container. Additionally, 14% of all litter comes from beverage containers. This is a disaster for our oceans as about 500,000 tons of plastic are dumped into them every year. Plastics are the number 1 type of trash found in the sea. Ocean Conservancy, an organisation that holds an annual coastal clean-up event in more than 150 countries worldwide, says that plastic debris makes up around 85 percent of all the trash collected from beaches, waterways and oceans – and that’s just the stuff we can see. So it pays to think twice about how we use and dispose of plastic items, otherwise we could be adding to the problem – the plastic bag wafting in the wind that finds its way to a storm drain; the potato crisp bag forgotten on a beach; the plastic soft drinks bottle washed away in a stream that leads to a river and, finally, the sea. The coastal clean-up event collected more than a million food wrappers, almost 850,000 plastic bottles and around 400,000 shopping bags – in just a single day. Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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